


The Secrets We Keep Come Out in Our Sleep

by haraya



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Female Apprentice, Romance, Smut
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-16
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-04-01 04:30:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 52,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13990515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haraya/pseuds/haraya
Summary: They are both of them a little more honest when they dream.





	1. Where 'I Love You' Can't Hurt Us

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set around a year after Lucio dies, so like two years before the game starts, approximately. Asra leaves on a journey, and the line between dream and memory begins to blur. NSFW!

He dreams of her often when he's away.

The words of an old sea shanty float in the air, sung to life by a voice he'd know anywhere, even in his sleep.

_"Oh, dream me safe, dream me true,_  
_Dream me coming home to you—"_

Her voice draws him in by the heart, making his feet move without thinking until he sees her shape emerge from the colorful chaos of his dream. Eyes closed, she sways to the melody, the fabric of her indigo-dyed skirt swishing around her legs, the ends of her hair brushing hypnotically against her waist as the landscape of Vesuvia's wharf unfolds like origami around them.

_"And I'll sail o'er the ocean blue,_  
_And I'll sail home, my lover, to you."_

He sings the last lines with her, the salt-air scrubbing his throat. She giggles as she turns to him, cheeks bunching up in a guileless smile, as young and as lovely as she ever was.

(She'll always be a little bit eighteen to him, he thinks—at least in some secret corner of his heart.)

She looks like she did when he fell in love the first time around—barefoot, sun-kissed, smiling; still unburdened by everything that came after. It's one of the few good things about leaving—his dreams of her are vividly detailed, and yet still just that: a dream. It's perfect.

It means he can't hurt her, here—no matter what he tells her.

"I love you," he says.

(He has not spoken those words awake in such a long time.)

She smiles at him, this dream-her, and it's a smile like her old smile—before everything went to shit. And she steps closer (just like she used to) and cups his face in her hands (just like she used to) and says (just like she always, _always_ used to):

"I love you, too."

(He has not heard those words awake in a much, much longer time still.)

This is a dream, and he is not afraid to hurt her, nor is he afraid to be a little more honest. He pulls her close and kisses her, mouths fitting together like muscle memory, like they belong.

This is a dream, so he lets himself pull her closer, _closer;_ he drags his mouth across her jaw then down her neck, and bites, _just there,_ easing the sting with a swipe of his tongue and reveling in the shuddering gasp at his ear.

This is a dream, but it begins to blur into memory; suddenly they are in the shop and his pants are slipping down his hips and her shirt is already gone. They are stumbling toward the bed; now they are on it—though whether he pushed or she pulled or both he does not know—or care—only focuses on pressing her further into the mattress as he kisses her, and kisses her, and kisses her.

"You've missed me," she says, giggling.

_Every day. Every heartbeat. Especially if you're right there._

"You are difficult not to miss," he says instead. "You bring too much trouble with you."

She laughs (—and he does not know how a laugh he hasn't heard in years can still be so _achingly_ familiar—) and draws him into a kiss again. He does not think to ask how they are suddenly skin to skin—not when she is soft and warm and _welcoming_ as he remembers. His cock is hard and aching where it slides against her slit—and impossible to completely ignore—but still he takes the time to map out her shape as if he hasn't done it a hundred, a thousand times in a different life—pressing his hands and mouth reverently to every dip and curve he still knows by heart.

He still knows her voice, too, and how to play it like an instrument: when he nips at her breast, swirling his tongue around her nipple, she hisses; when he rocks his hips against hers, dragging a nail lightly along the crease at the top of her thigh, she whimpers. When he rubs circles on her clit with his thumb, she gasps. When he slides a finger into her soaked entrance, she moans.

He draws the digit out slowly, savoring the slick, wet sounds her body makes, and repeats until her breath goes ragged. Two fingers now, crooking inside her _just_ there, and she comes, screaming his name.

His _name._

(She has not said _that_ awake in too long a time altogether.)

And so here, in his dream, he imagines this her-but-not-her say it again, and again, and again.

She is in the middle of saying it when he enters her, and she stutters on the last syllable, ending it in a sigh.

"Asr— _hah—"_

She throws her head back, baring her neck to him, and the sight sends heat flashing down his chest and straight to his cock, making it twitch where he's already buried inside her to the hilt. He's upon her as mercilessly as only a starved lover can be, mouthing desperately at her neck, alternating between the sharp nip of teeth and the gentle caress of tongue.

She is only yet coming down from her high; her walls are still clenching rhythmically around him, but she arches up to meet him anyway, wrapping her legs around his hips as if she could not bear to have him move away. The heat emanating from her body licks his skin like fire from a furnace, and he is more than glad to burn.

He loses himself in the pull and drag of his cock inside her, in the moans and sighs she breathes into the space between them. This is more memory than dream, now; he has no will to care.

(His waking life is practically a nightmare. He has since learned to take comfort where he can.)

"Asra," she says, breathy, desperate; her fingers tangle in the hair at the nape of his neck and clutch at his shoulder as he continues to thrust madly into her. "My Asra."

_I have always been yours,_ he thinks. _Only ever yours. In every world. In every lifetime._

"I love you," he says again. He thinks he does not (did not) say it enough—awake or otherwise.

She is looking at him now with adoration—one of the few of her expressions that carried over from _before_ (when he had reveled in it; such a love-starved thing he was) to _after_ (it hurts him now, every time; she does not know what he has or hasn't done to deserve it). His pace stutters, and one of her hands brushes his hair away from his eyes with a sort of shy affection.

In that split second when his dream-memory overlaps with an image from the present, Asra comes undone, spilling into her as he cries out her name. Love leaks out of his eyes as tears—all the love he'd already given her, and all the love he has yet to give, kept secret and safe until she chooses to accept it _(if she ever does again)_. Her back arches as she is pulled over the edge with him, and everything blurs into light and love and loss, into heat and heartbeats and home.

 

\---

 

He has the decency to feel guilty about it, after, when he gets home.

He really oughtn't be imagining her _like that,_ consciously or otherwise—not when she doesn't really know who she is, or who _he_ is, or who they were to each other. Not when she, perhaps ( _probably_ —he can stand to be a little more honest, even if it's just to himself) doesn't want him that way.

(Not anymore.)

It's guilt that makes him pause beyond the closed door of the shop, listening to her absentmindedly sing the lilting notes of a sea shanty she shouldn't remember but does.

_"Oh, dream me safe, dream me true,_  
_Dream me coming home to you—"_

He knows the last lines; he's heard her sing this many times, before—well. _Before._ He whisper-sings along with her as he releases the cross-me-not spell.

_"And I'll sail o'er the ocean blue,_  
_And I'll sail home, my lover, to you."_

(She is not his lover, not anymore, but he still means every word.)

"You're back," she says, looking up with a smile as he steps over the threshold. "Welcome home, Master."

(And he _knows_ she is not his lover, but gods help him, she won't even say his _name—)_

But she crosses over to him and pulls him into a hug, which is not so strange or out of the ordinary in itself, but is always— _an experience._ For him. Her fingers are clutching at the scarf around his neck, at the fabric on his shoulder, and it is difficult not to bury his face in her cropped-short hair and breathe in the familiar ocean-breeze smell of her, of home.

(It is only slightly less difficult than potentially having to _explain_ that to her, which is the only thing stopping him.)

He laughs, instead, and hopes she does not hear how strained it is when he says, "Someone's missed me."

She pulls back with a chiding pout. "It is difficult not to," she replies easily, "what with the amount of trouble you bring with you."

He goes still.

"Oh, hello to you too, Faust."

His familiar slides out of his collar and onto her arm, drawing her away with friendly flick of the tongue even as he stands rooted the spot.

_How did she—could she have—_

"It seems a family of mice have taken up residence somewhere in the kitchen. It does annoy the salamander so," he hears her say as she moves away with Faust toward the stairs. "Could you help with that, Faust?"

He vaguely registers Faust's reply, though they both know she cannot hear it, and yet he remains stock-still, thoughts whirling at a hundred miles a second.

"Master?" That draws him out of his reverie, and he looks up to see her paused at the bottom of the stairs. "I made stew for us, of course."

He studies her, but her face is blank.

_She couldn't have._

"I'll be right there," he says weakly, and she gives him a softly subdued smile.

She nods and disappears up the stairs with Faust, leaving Asra where he stands unmoving by the still-open door, his heartbeat racing in the heat of Vesuvian summer and the thrill of coming home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Was debating whether to post these as two separate fics, but they're kinda sorta similar thematically so I just lumped them together here. Might add more in the future if inspiration strikes.


	2. Where I Follow the Stars to Find Your Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set after the updated fountain scene with Asra in the prologue, right before Book VI. Rei finds Asra in the oasis after he makes her forget.

She finds herself in the desert again.

There is no fear when she realizes where she is; no questions of what this place is, or how she got here. No sense of strangeness.

(Everything makes a strange kind of sense, in dreams.)

But there is something different, tonight; a plaintive keening sounds across the dunes, echoing from sand to sky, brushing like desert dust against her skin.

_Asra._

She immediately starts running. She does not stop to question why.

(She already knows.)

Her feet kick up clouds of rust-colored sand as she sprints across the desolate landscape. The stars here are strange and shifting, the constellations unfamiliar—but they are stars, still, and she knows that if she listens to them, they will help her find her way.

_West._

Helpful, guiding whispers echo through her mind as she runs, each step pounding in time to the rhythm of the stars' pulsing light. There is urgency in the flicker of starlight, driving her forward until she sees a lonely silhouette in the distance.

_Asra!_

He is kneeling on the sand, curled in on himself, looking startlingly small. His shoulders are shaking (she had leaned on those shoulders); his fingers curling like claws to clutch at his side, at the fabric at his chest (she had twined those fingers with her own).

Desperation pushes her faster, drawn as if by a reel towards his dark shape, screaming his name all the while.

"Asra! _Asra!"_

He turns, expression visibly shocked when he sees her, and even in the dim light of this eerie landscape's perpetual twilight she can make out the glimmer of tears in his eyes.

(She does not think she has ever seen Asra cry—and yet it feels like it should be familiar anyway.)

"Rei?" he says, voice trembling with hesitation and an underlying sadness whose cause is yet hidden from her. It tugs at her chest; she wants to take him in her arms and hold him, to murmur soothing whispers into the soft down of his hair and tell him everything will be alright.

That urge, too, is familiar—and she knows very well why.

(She knows. She has known for a while, now.)

"How did you find me?" he asks, still staring dumbfounded as she kneels in front of him and takes his hands in hers.

"It wasn't that hard," she says, shrugging. It's the truth. "I think I'll always be able to find you, if I had the heart to."

A shadow passes over Asra's face at her words. She can practically _hear_ him building up walls between them.

"Following your heart is a dangerous habit," he admonishes with a rueful chuckle. "Someone always ends up getting hurt."

Something like shame twists his features, regret settling on the corners of his mouth. Pain blooms in her chest at the sight.

"Oh, _Asra,"_ she says, squeezing his hands.

No titles—not here, in this place that seems to know her heart better than she does. Truth be told, when she is here, she does not remember calling him anything else.

She cups his face in her hands. It should not feel as natural as it does, she thinks. But she also doesn't care. The look in his eyes when he leans into her touch tells her he is thinking the exact same thing.

"If it means finding you," she tells him, "I think it'll have been worth it."

He blinks.

_"Ah,"_ he chokes out, color seeping onto his cheeks as he refuses to meet her eyes. It is such an endearing look on him that she laughs, the sound ringing across the empty landscape. A low, hesitant chuckle builds in his throat—little more than a huff, really—but it's there.

And just like that, she hears the walls come tumbling down.

"This is a better dream than I expected," he says, scrounging up a wry smile.

She does not have to think for her lips to curl upwards, mirroring his. "How can I make it even better?"

His eyes search hers, flashing violet in the starlight.

_Like indigo,_ the stars say.

She does not know why that matters, only that it does.

(Home, to her, has always felt distinctly _purple,_ somehow.)

He licks his lips, breath fanning across her cheeks. "Stay," he says at last, uncertainty making his voice tremble.

She never thought he'd ever be the one begging her not to leave, but her answer comes easier than breathing. "Alright."

Her thumbs brush his tears away, tracing the curve of his cheekbones. It feels like muscle memory, somehow.

_It is._

The stars overhead are tittering, now. She can hear them plainly, though she knows Asra can't.

(She remembers they had started screaming, the first time she saw Asra. She still doesn't know what that means.)

What she does know is this: she loves him. She has known this for a very long time.

But she is only now beginning to realize—

_How long?_ she asks the stars.

_Longer than you know,_ they say. _Longer than memory._

Her heart twists at that reply, and it must show on her face, because he asks her, "Are the stars speaking to you right now?"

"Yes."

His head tips to the side, ever curious. "What are they saying?"

Her smile turns watery; tears fall to the sand beneath them, watering the parched earth like rain.

"They're telling me I love you," she says, "but I already knew that."

She leans forward to press her forehead against Asra's, meeting his eyes as they grow round in surprise. The words spill unbidden from the unexamined depths of her heart, words she never thought of but knows instinctively are hers anyway.

"I'm sorry I forgot you," she says, and he is close enough that the sharp gasp he lets out brushes against her lips. "For what it's worth, I loved you all the same."

Emotions parade across his face—shock and disbelief and a desperate, painful hope, until his features settle into a dull, unhappy smile. "We're dreaming," he says. "You don't really know what you're saying."

"No," she admits carefully, "but that doesn't mean it isn't true."

He pulls her close, then—arms wrapping around her as if he means to never let her go. His sigh ruffles the hair at her temple.

"I love you, too," he says, burying his face in her hair. "I want you to remember that. I want you to remember _me._ That's why it's so hard—" he chokes out, his grip tightening almost painfully around her, "—to make you forget."

_"Asra—"_ Her heart leaps into her throat. _No, please,_ she thinks. _I want to remember you, too!_ She looks up at him, and finds him smiling sadly down at her.

"It's alright." A pause, and he smiles reassuringly. "I'll still love you," he says, "even when you don't remember."

He kisses her forehead, and a haze clouds her mind and she drifts off as if into sleep—

—and wakes up once more in the guest chamber in the palace, just as dawn begins to peek over the horizon, with the feeling of missing something that she's grown accustomed to making itself a comfortable home in her chest.

A soft hiss makes her look down to see Faust peering curiously from where she's draped across her middle, tail curling idly around her wrist. Absentmindedly, Rei scratches Faust's chin, making the snake's tail wiggle in delight.

"I feel like I've forgotten something important, Faust," she confides, "but I can't begin to imagine what it was."

Faust slithers closer, resting her head above her heart.

Rei lets out a deep, echoing sigh, and then smiles tiredly. "You're right. Sleep now, think later."

Gently, Rei strokes a hand over Faust's scales, the movement slowing as she begins to succumb once more to sleep. She thinks she hears a soft whisper just before she's pulled completely under, but she's already dreaming of a sunlit willow tree before she can wonder if it's real.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I _do_ like the updated prologue scenes (it's interesting to see how exactly remembering hurts the apprentice) I actually . . . prefer the old one? I think it fits better with the pacing of the plot, since Asra decides to bring them through to the Lisa Frank oasis in the very next chapter. I think he'd be _extremely_ hesitant to do that after they just had an episode, so this is an attempt to kinda . . . bridge that gap, I guess? Also I wanted an excuse to finally write about Rei using her astromancy magic, so here you go!


	3. Where We Don't Have to Dance Just to Hold Each Other Close

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is just Rei's PoV of Chapter 1, so this is still set two years before the start of the game. Rei misses Asra more than she'd like to admit. NSFW!

She misses him terribly when he's gone.

Not, well, _him,_ so much as—having him in the shop, his warmth lingering in the blankets, his magic drifting like smoke in the room.

(It gets lonely something awful, when he's not here.)

But she's not— _pining,_ or anything. They're not— _intimate,_ no matter what everyone in the market assumes, their eyes following her and Asra each time they walk past the myriad stalls. And she's no child, crying for a caretaker. She can handle herself just fine.

She just misses having him around.

(Perhaps a little more than she ought, but still.)

She's _fine._

And if she tucks the sheets a little tighter around her at night, wishing for a different weight, and different warmth, well. That's  _normal,_ right?

People miss people they care about.

(And she cares about him, perhaps a _lot_ more than she ought, but _still.)_

It's _fine._ It's _normal._

(But what would _she_ know about _normal?)_

She shakes her head. It would pain Asra, she knows, that she even has to ask these kinds of things. He has more important things to preoccupy himself with, surely, than wondering if his housemate is, well, _fine._

Which she is.

Absolutely.

_It's not as if she thinks about him every second of the day,_ she assures herself, as she cleans out the stove he'd neglected to, the salamander chirping gratefully at her from his perch on her shoulder. _It's only when her hands and her mind are idle, which is usually when there are no customers in the shop._

Which is most of the day, really, but _most_ isn't _all,_ so it's fine.

And it isn't as if she _dreams_ about him.

( _Often,_ anyway.)

When she _does_ dream of him, it's usually as enigmatic as he himself is: she finds herself chasing his fleeting figure through sandy dunes, through the deserted streets of Vesuvia, through whirling crowds of masks in lavishly decorated halls.

She dreams of chasing after him a lot, and she tries not to think too hard on what that implies about her.

But when she dreams tonight, she's standing on a wharf that takes her a moment to realize is Vesuvia's. She hasn't been here often. (Asra doesn't like taking her near the sea, and she doesn't ask why.) She recognizes the place, though—the ships tethered to the dock, the smaller boats beached on the shore; the salt-spray smell and the squawking of seagulls overhead.

The silhouette of the Lazaret, its shadow looming on the horizon, barely visible through the fog.

She walks on tentative steps along the wharf, the sound of the crashing waves and the feel of salt-mist on her skin stirring up old, old memories inside her—

—and she begins to sing, a half-forgotten melody that her tongue still knows the shapes of.

_"Oh, dream me safe, dream me true,_  
_Dream me coming home to you—"_

Another voice joins her, always and ever in perfect harmony, whether to the song on her lips or the beat of her heart.

_"And I'll sail o'er the ocean blue_  
_And I'll sail home, my lover, to you."_

And when she turns around, he's there, smiling softly, the ocean breeze ruffling his pearlescent hair. He looks—not _younger,_ not really, but— _lighter._ More free. He looks like she imagines Asra would have, before he took on the strange, heavy burden he bears, a secret hurt that he carries on his back like a tortoise's scarred shell.

There's a serene air surrounding him now that is different from his usual calm. It's the kind of peace, she thinks, that comes from having nothing to fear. She opens her mouth to ask, but it is he who speaks first, and what he says is—

"I love you."

There's a brief second of pause while her mind blanks out, before overwhelming joy crashes over her like a wave, a smile splitting her cheeks so wide it _hurts._ Her blood thrums in her veins, gloriously alive; like a puppet on her heart's strings, she moves closer to him, cupping his face in her hands. Her lips move as if by muscle memory, and she says, "I love you, too."

His mouth is on hers, suddenly, and despite her surprise it's only a half-second's decision before she's kissing him back, hands sinking into the soft down of his hair. His arms are tight around her, his lips moving from her mouth to her jaw to her neck with an ardent sort of desperation that she hardly ever sees from him, and he walks them together until the back of her knees hit the edge of the bed.

She does not know, precisely, how they came to be at the shop, but that is a question for another time because Asra is _kissing_ her, and his hands are on her shoulders, unhindered by her shirt, which is somehow already on the floor—

They fall onto the bed, still kissing. She does not know when they decided that _this_ was how they were spending their time, and frankly she doesn't care. She has wanted him for—for—

She does not know how long she has wanted him, only that she does, and that it has been too, too long since she has had his hands on her skin, tracing reverent lines along her every curve.

She giggles breathlessly as he nuzzles against her neck. "You've missed me," she says, because that's exactly what it feels like when his fingers are grasping at her hips as if he means to never let go.

She smiles, smug, and tries very hard not to think about what a hypocrite she is.

"You are difficult not to miss," he murmurs, breath ghosting hot on her sternum, and though his hair covers his eyes she can still tell he is smiling by the way his lips curve against her collarbone. "You bring too much trouble with you."

She laughs, and gives him a kiss, but when she pulls away to speak, whatever quip she would have replied is drowned out by her moan when he grinds his hips against hers. She arches wantonly against him, desperate to eliminate any space between his body and hers, and she thinks she should be embarrassed, but it is hard to remember why when the way his hardness presses between her thighs feels so _right._

And anyway, this is _Asra,_ whose face is her first memory; Asra, whose hands she remembers best as twining with her own; Asra, who makes her feel whole and cherished and _safe._

So she does not bother silencing herself when Asra touches her, his hands seemingly  everywhere at once, his lips leaving wet marks as he trails kisses down her body. She thinks he enjoys it, anyway, if the way he smiles against her skin when she moans is any indication.

There is a wonderful freedom in not having to hold back; she has this vague sense that they have been dancing circles around each other all this time, and it is a profound relief to be able to pull him close, to feel his pulse racing under her fingertips, to let him know—loudly and without question—how much she _wants_ him.

His thumb is rubbing teasing circles on her inner thigh, and she whimpers, asking, _begging—_

—until he presses his thumb on her swollen clit, making her hips jerk up off the bed, desperate for more, more, _more._

He pins her down, one hand on her hip as the other traces a finger along her slit, gathering the wetness already leaking from her entrance. Desire-darkened eyes hypnotize her as he bends down and runs his wicked, _talented_ tongue around her nipple.

There is no point to being quiet, really—not when Asra is sucking at her breasts, alternating between one and the other; not when the fingers that had once combed her hair and fed her when she couldn't do so herself are pressing into her cunt, massaging her slick walls in slow, practiced motions. So she lets herself be loud, her moans echoing around the room they call home, her fingers twisting in the sheets of the bed they share.

His digits are scissoring inside her, now, and she delights in the stretch, already shivering in anticipation as she wonders what it would be like to take his cock—whether in her cunt or in her mouth; whatever he wants, she doesn't care—she only wants to be able to make him feel as _ridiculously, deliriously_ _good_ as he's making her feel right now, his hands stroking her in all the best ways. She writhes on the bed as he fingers her mercilessly, pressing into her most intimate space until he finds that spot, _just there,_ that makes her toes curl against the mattress, and focuses all his attention on it until the tension building in her core snaps and she comes screaming his name.

Her head is still foggy from her high when she feels him aligning himself at her entrance, but it doesn't take much thought other than _yes_ to let her legs fall open as he presses into her heat, her inner walls still quivering as she takes him into her.

She stutters on his name as he sheathes himself fully, and _oh,_ this is _better_ than she imagined, because she had not thought of how _full_ she'd feel, having him inside her. How _right_ it feels, breathing in the same air; how—

_—familiar._

That train of thought is cut short once Asra begins to thrust into her, and it's all she can do to lock her ankles at the small of his back and pull him closer, _closer,_ impossibly close, until she can no longer say where she ends and he begins. She thinks Asra has the same idea, because he can't seem to stop kissing her everywhere he can reach, the scrape of his teeth leaving marks she wishes with all her being would still be there in the morning.

"Asra," she sighs, loving the taste of his name on her tongue. She wonders, briefly, why she doesn't call him by it more often. "My Asra."

_Please,_ she thinks desperately. _Say you're mine. Because I can be nobody else's but yours._

"I love you," he says instead, and it's enough.

A sweetly aching tenderness suffuses her chest even as the knot of pleasure at her center tightens. He loves her. He _loves_ her.

(Oh, but she would gladly miss him for a lifetime, if only to hear him say that again.)

She brushes away his hair from his forehead, wanting to see his eyes. He looks at her, and she drowns in purple—

(—the color of hands stained with indigo dye, the color of the twilight sky as she sailed landward at the end of the day, the color of the iridescent inside of a seashell—)

—the color of _home._

She smiles at him, and at the gentle touch of her fingers on his skin, he shudders, eyes closing as he reaches his peak. He buries his face in her neck and hauls her close, hands grasping frantically at her hips. He's grinding against her, the rough thatch of hair above his cock rubbing deliciously against her clit, until she's undone by the way his breath goes ragged in her ear, the way his hot spend trickles out of her as he fills her, the way he groans her name, as honest and tender as when he'd said _I love you._

She arches off the bed, lights exploding behind her closed lids as desire burns away in her veins, leaving only pleasure. She clutches at him, needy for the warmth of his skin, as she cries out his name—

—into the stillness of the lonely night.

Her breath comes in hard pants, almost choking on air she can't seem to get enough of as she looks around the empty room.

She did _not_ just—

_No._ She _didn't._

She did _not_ wake herself up, sweaty and disoriented, screaming Asra's name.

She did _not_ just press her thighs together automatically, trying to stem the untended need at her core.

And she most definitely did _not_ dream of Asra, of his hands on her skin, of how he'd borne her down to the mattress and of how she'd spread her legs for him, _begging_ him to—

_"Fuck!"_ she says, but it comes out more as a squeak, because sweat still trickles down her back like a lover's touch—

_(Like Asra's magic, liquid and slow and sensual—)_

"Fuck!" she says again, the second time in half a minute.

She buries her face in a pillow, and then realizes, not three seconds later, what a terrible idea that is, because Asra's scent is still all over the sheets. The heady smoke-tea-rainwater smell of him lingers in the bed, in the room, perfuming the air with a subtle yet persistent sense of _Asra._

A frustrated, strangled groan dies in her throat as she shoots up from the bed, hands tugging fitfully at her hair because even here, alone in the dark, he is _everywhere._ Except, perhaps, where she needs him most, because the tender ache at the apex of her thighs is getting harder to ignore.

She presses her forehead to her knees as she tries not to go mad. _Of all people,_ she thinks, _why did it have to be Asra?_

And she very pointedly ignores the little voice that says, _well, who else would it be?_

_(Because I can be nobody else's but yours.)_

_Of course_ it would be Asra, whose grin never fails to tease a smile from her own lips; Asra, with his babbling-brook laugh; Asra, who looks at her like she's the most precious thing in the world, always just out of his reach—

Stars _above,_ she is never, _ever_ again going to be able to look him in the eyes—

_(—purple like indigo stains, like twilight skies, like seashells, like home—)_

She shakes her head to dispel the building pain. She does not need a headache on top of— _this._

_This_ being the persistent throbbing between her legs, still calling for attention. She sighs, tipping her head back, and watches the slowly swaying shadows of the protection charms Asra has hung on the rafters.

She cannot _believe_ she is about to—

She sighs again, frustrated and guilty, resigning herself to a lifetime of looking down at her feet whenever Asra is so much as in the same room, and slowly presses two fingers against her soaked slit.

She falls back against the mattress, defeated, and lets Asra's scent surround her as she presses a finger into her entrance, and tries not to think about how she wishes it was _Asra's_ hands on her, tries not to think about how good it felt when it was _his_ touch bringing her pleasure.

_Not that she would really know,_ she thinks, muffling a moan with her other hand. Wet dreams aren't exactly a good basis for real-life experience.

And yet—it had felt _real._ Realer, at least, than the way they'd always held each other at arm's length; realer than the way Asra slept on the very edge of his side of the bed, keeping a lonely chasm between them night after night.

And it hadn't just been the sex, she thinks, pressing her fingers against that spot inside her, trying to remember how he'd done it and despairing when it doesn't feel the same. It had felt real, too—the way he'd looked at her, unafraid to want her. The way he'd said _I love you._

She thinks of how he'd kissed her, and how he'd looked at her with desire laid plain in his darkened eyes, and she has to squeeze her eyes tight as she comes with the ghost of his whispered _I love you_ in her ear.

_Asra can take his time coming home,_ she thinks, as she rolls over—ashamed but too far gone to care—onto his side of the bed, and makes a mental note to wash the bedsheets tomorrow. She'll need a week, at least, before the sight of his hands stops sending heat creeping up her spine, and another week before she can scrub off the _I love you, too_ that lingers at the tip of her tongue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fair warning, any future chapters of this fic will probably alternate between angsty-emotionally-charged-conversations and smut-as-character-insights.


	4. Where You're Mine Until the Sunrise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set pretty early post-amnesia, maybe eight, ten months after the last Masquerade. Asra lies to himself perhaps a little too well. NSFW.

There are nights when Asra can't bear to sleep beside her, when he slips out of their bed and down the stairs to the curtained-off area in the backroom, where he curls up on a straw pallet in the corner and pretends that nothing hurts.

It's not, as these things go, a perfect solution; the backroom is just as full of ghosts and memories as the rest of the shop, but at least here he can't hear her quiet breathing as she sleeps, an arm's length and a world away all at once. Here he can pretend that everything is as it used to be—maybe he just got too caught up in his books again, and passed out in the corner, too tired to make it up the stairs. In the morning, he will wake under a blanket that had been draped over him in the night, and he will look up to see her smiling face, a fond and oft-repeated scolding ready on her lips.

Or maybe her father and brother are in town to trade again, and he and Rei have to (badly) pretend like they haven't been living together— _just the two of them, in the shop that has only ever had the one bed_ —for almost a year already. It had been a game to them, of sorts—to see how many kisses he could steal from her when no one was looking, the two of them putting on the absolute bare minimum of a farce for a father who wasn't quite ready to see his little girl grown.

Or _maybe_ they'd had a minor fight and she'd kicked him out of bed, like he's heard some old married couples are wont. It's not something he thinks she'd do, but it's easier to pretend it is, rather than acknowledge the real reason he's here.

 _(Oh,_ what he wouldn't give up, even for just that singular normalcy.)

He tosses and turns on the straw mattress, trying to find a comfortable position. The pallet is hardly as cozy as the bed—really, it's just some pillows and blankets thrown atop a mattress sheet stuffed with dry chaff—but at least her scent doesn't linger here.

(Not anymore, at least.)

Because he still remembers when this room was hers, when her aunt still owned the shop and he'd just been the hired help pining uselessly after her from behind the counter. He remembers ducking into this room with her on slow afternoons, tea on the table between them as they pored over books together, making a mess of experimental spells more often than not. And he remembers waking up here in her bed with no memory of how he'd gotten there, and he'd looked up at her through the haze of a fever and thought her the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.

(He remembers it all. He has to; he's the only one who does anymore.)

Now, this area of the backroom has been designated his personal space, where he keeps the things he wants to be kept private. The straw no longer smells like her; the walls no longer hold her warmth. But even then the room is still full of her, because most of the things he keeps in here aren't even his.

Around him, stacked in crates and boxes, are the mementos of their old life, hidden away for safekeeping. Trinkets and love letters, Masquerade memorabilia and pressed flowers. In the dark, he can just make out the silhouette of the old guitar she'd always loved to hear him play on, the familiar shape of it recognizable under the sheet haphazardly thrown over it.

In a chest carved from the twisting wood of a mangrove tree lies her most cherished belongings. A navigator's astrolabe. A rectangular sail, its once-vibrant indigo faded. A conch shell, its pearlescent inside streaked with purple. A handful of divination stars, carved from polished sea glass. A half-mask the color of midnight, silver constellations painted in his clumsy hand. Her magic still thrums through every single one. He can feel it vibrating through the air, like the haunting echo of a half-forgotten melody.

He wants, more than anything, to give them back to her, to watch her face light up in recognition of the things she didn't know she'd lost.

And then he remembers how her mind goes blank, how that beautiful, _beloved_ spark leaves her eyes and she slumps, ignorant of how tears stream down his cheeks, until he makes her forget again.

He shudders, and turns over on the straw, trying to think of happier things. He thinks of how she'd smiled when he reintroduced her to pumpkin bread; he thinks of how he'd heard her humming snatches of a song they'd danced to, once upon a Masquerade.

He thinks of how, years and years ago _(a lifetime, literally, for her),_ he'd once laid with fever on this very pallet, how he'd looked at her as she tended to him, and fell in love for the very first time.

He groans, frustrated, and wills himself to sleep.

(Mementos are bad enough, but it's the memories that get him, every time.)

 

\---

 

Asra dreams of things that had happened, and things that had not.

This had happened: he had woken up on this pallet, in this room, deliriously sick, and she had leaned over him to peer into his eyes. He'd thought her an angel, or some kind of goddess, and felt _blessed_ for the first time in his short, tragic existence.

 _This_ had not: she brushes the back of her fingers down his temple, along his cheek, before she rests her thumb on his bottom lip with the lightest of pressures.

This had happened: he had smiled, half out of his mind with fever, and told her she was beautiful. She had laughed, and he thought that if he died right then it would have been a life well lived already.

 _This_ had not: her eyes darken, and a wicked grin tugs at her lips, before she leans down and kisses him, pressing him into the pillows. His arms wrap automatically around her, pulling her body to his with a groan that says _I missed you._

It's not her, but—

Sometimes Asra stretches his memories a bit.

(They are all he has, now; he has to make them count.)

She settles between his thighs as she bears him down into the straw, hips grinding against his already half-hard member.

"Little lonely here, isn't it?" she murmurs, idly skating her lips along his jaw.

(He does that, sometimes—have made-up conversations with her in his head. It's both blessing and curse, that he still knows her voice well enough to know exactly what she'd say.)

There is a playful lilt to her words that he hasn't heard since—since—

He can't even remember when. He doesn't want to.

He wants to sink a little further into this memory, and forget reality just until the sunrise.

He tugs lightly at her hair— _it's always longer, in his dreams, isn't it?_ —coaxing her mouth back to his to claim her lips in a needy kiss. He feels her smile against him, feels her shake with mirth as he pulls her closer still, insistent.

"Need something?" she asks, pulling a little away, and laughs again when he chases after her with a whine.

 _You,_ he thinks. _I need you back._ And then he thinks of her, the her in the now, sleeping upstairs in a half-empty bed, and amends, _I need_ us _back. I need everything to be okay again._

"Oh, _Asra,"_ she says, and it's _not_ her, because really she's upstairs, a stranger unaware of the heart she holds in her hands, but he wants to believe her anyway when she tells him, "I'm _here,_ aren't I?"

And really, isn't that what matters?

That she's here, _alive,_ that she's still herself in all the ways that matter?

 _You don't love me anymore,_ something ugly and selfish inside him says. _That mattered, too._

"Do you _know_ that?" she challenges, this specter conjured by his subconscious answering his unspoken thoughts. "Do you _really?_ "

"No," he grants her, tongue sluggish and uncertain around the word. "But you're—" _You're just a dream I can't let go of._ His lip trembles under the press of his teeth. It's not her. "—it's different, _we're_ different; you're not—you're—"

"Still here?" she fills in for him, tapping a finger over where his heart rests. She smiles. "Still yours."

And she isn't, she _isn't;_ she won't even call him by his _name,_ but is it really so bad to _pretend,_ just for the night?

"The mind forgets so easily," she says, the smile on her lips turning soft with melancholy. "But not so the heart. I have always been yours, Asra, and I still am whether both of us know it or not."

He's dreaming. _He's dreaming._

He gives her a rueful smile, taking her hand to kiss the tips of her fingers. There are tears gathering at the corners of his eyes. "At least until the sunrise."

She huffs a laugh. "Better make this count, then."

She kisses him then, all tangled tongues and muscle memory, and he's _dreaming,_ and _it's not her,_ but _fuck,_ he just wants to forget everything else and pretend she's his again.

_(Just until the sunrise.)_

He buries his fingers in her hair as she busies herself with the buttons on his shirt, leaving a trail of open-mouthed kisses down his chest with each one that comes undone. She deftly unties the laces of his pants, pulling it down his legs with a playful glint in her eyes before shucking off her own clothes. And then she kneels over him, running her hands languidly on his bare thighs, watching as he squirms under her palms.

"Need something?" she asks again, purposely keeping the pressure light just to tease him.

It's not her; he's dreaming, and so he's unafraid to ask—

"Touch me," he says, swallowing. "Please."

She laughs, and moves her hands up his legs to rub circles on the jut of his hipbones. "Aren't I?"

He shifts, trying to bring her hands where he needs them, but she just moves with him, grinning when he whines in frustration.

"'s not enough." He tugs at her wrists, to no avail. "Please," he begs, _"please,_ I've missed you _so much,_ I—"

He cuts himself off with a gasp when she finally takes him in hand. He arches into her touch, and he thinks he hears her murmur, _"Beautiful."_

 _"Rei,"_ he groans, eyes screwing shut. Desire buzzes all the way down to the tips of his fingers, to his toes curling on the pallet.

"More?" she asks, playful.

 _"Yes,"_ he says, bucking into her hand, "yes, please, _ah—!"_

He has to bite down on his lip to stay quiet when she begins moving her hand in firm strokes that send bolts of pleasure shooting up his spine, clouding his mind until she's the only thing he sees. She huffs a quiet chuckle and runs her other hand over his thigh, before she props her elbow on his bent knee and rests her chin in her palm.

"You look so _pretty_ when you beg," she says, the perfect picture of calm as she stares at him through half-lidded eyes, a lazy smile quirking her mouth. "Did I ever tell you that?"

"No," he answers immediately, between short, shaky pants. Heat coils low in his belly, stoked further by every pass of her hand on his aching shaft. "I'd remember."

 _"Well,"_ she says, gaze sharpening, "if you're still that coherent, I'm not doing a very good job."

And then she leans down, and he's helpless to stop the cry that bursts from his lips as she runs her tongue along his length. She takes his cock so sweetly in her mouth, her tongue tracing firm circles on the underside of his member as she wraps her hand around what she can't take.

He dimly registers her other hand leaving his thigh, and when he looks down, he sees her cupping her mound, grinding against her palm even as she sucks him off. He groans at the sight, at the thought that she takes as much enjoyment from this as he is, and he opens his mouth to stutter, "Rei, please, _want—"_

He whines when she takes her mouth off him, though her hand still moves up and down, up and down, torturously slow. She raises a brow at him, her unflappable calm betrayed only by the slightest flush across her cheeks as she continues stroking his length with one hand and sliding a finger along her slit with the other.

"Yes?" she asks, laying her cheek on his bent knee, watching as he bucks his hips into her touch.

"I— _hng—"_ he tries again, "I want—"

He cuts himself off with another whine when she very-definitely-on-purpose brushes her thumb over the sensitive head. He knows. He can tell by the way her cheek bunches against his knee when one corner of her mouth turns up in a grin.

 _"Want—?"_ she prompts him, drawing out the single syllable in a low, sultry voice.

 _"You,"_ he chokes out, half-mad from the warmth of her hand. "Want, wanna taste— _mmngh—!"_

A strangled cry is all he can give when she dips her head and licks a tiny, teasing stripe on the underside of his shaft.

"Taste what?" she asks, feigning ignorance even as she places kisses on the tip of his cock. He bites back a whimper when she settles her weight back on her ankles, spreading her knees so he can better see how her folds glisten with her own slick.

"Here?" she asks, dipping a finger into herself. It slides in smooth as anything, and he wants, he wants, _he wants—_

 _"Yes,"_ he groans, attention split between her hand on his cock and the lewd, wet sounds coming from her sex as she slides in a second finger after the first. "Rei, _Rei, please—"_

He cries out, head tipping back in ecstasy as she leans forward again and takes him back into her mouth. He barely registers when something wet taps against his throat, and he looks down to see her eyes dark with desire as she stares back at him from between his legs, one arm outstretched toward him, fingers slick with her fluid hovering just in front of his face.

He eagerly wraps his lips around her digits, groaning at the taste of her as he laps at her skin. The searing heat of his tongue makes her gasp, mouth tightening briefly around his length, before she does it again, deliberate, when he sings filthy praises in response. _So good, so sweet, don't stop, please, please, don't stop, hah—_

He's already trembling, teetering on the edge, and he grips her hair as he fucks into the warm, wet cavern of her mouth. She moans when he does, peeking up at him through the dark curtain of her lashes, and smiles around his shaft, saliva and his own pre-cum leaking from the corner of her mouth.

 _"Close,"_ he warns her, mumbling around her fingers, throat tight with pleasure, "'m _close,_ Rei— _ah—!"_

She only hums, and sucks in her cheeks, enveloping him in warmth until he comes undone, spilling into her mouth. Her throat moves as she swallows, the excess fluid dripping down her chin and onto the mattress.

When he collapses back into the bedding, out of breath and sated, she crawls over him, pushing his hair out of his eyes. It summons that memory again, and he smiles up at her through hooded eyes.

(It's not her, but that's okay. Pretending has its perks.)

"I never told you," he says, taking her hand and pressing it against his cheek, "but this was when I knew I was in love with you."

She snorts indelicately. "When I sucked your dick?"

 _"No!"_ he says, laughing. "When I came down with a fever that one winter we had snow, and you brought me here to take care of me. You pressed your hand to my forehead just like this," he mimics the action, "and I thought if I died right then I would've died happy."

She smiles at him, achingly soft, at odds with the airy, flippant way she says, "Well, I'm glad you didn't."

(And he thinks, _I'm sorry I can't say the same.)_

He closes his eyes as she presses a sweetly tender kiss to his forehead.

_"Rei—"_

And he opens his eyes again, only to wake alone in the backroom, his clothes damp with sweat and the sheets stained with his spend.

Outside, the sunrise is already creeping over the city, spilling pale blue dawn through the foggy window.

 

\---

 

"Master," Rei says, later that morning while they're out on the balcony—he hanging up the laundry and she tending to the garden, "have you ever been in love?"

He stops, hands pausing mid-wring, letting puddles form at his feet.

 _Yes,_ is the first answer that comes to mind; _I still am,_ is the second.

He clips a wet bedsheet onto the clothesline as he thinks of an appropriate third. Below, the sounds of the city float up to them, from the crashing of waves in the south to the bustle of the market a little further east, but up here on the balcony the rest of the world seems to reach them in a quiet murmur, drowned out by the quiet buzzing of a bee near the lavender and the _drip drip drip_ of the laundry drying in the sun. Faust is blending in somewhere in the wisteria, listening; high above, a familiar bird circles overhead, ever watching from a safe, unobtrusive distance.

"Been getting into the romances on the shelf, have we?" he asks instead, evasive. He shoots her a teasing grin over his shoulder and she flushes.

 _"No,"_ she denies vehemently. And amends, "Well, a little, but—" She shrugs, valiantly trying to play off her embarrassment. It doesn't work; he knows her too well, though he doesn't tell her that. "I was just curious."

He hums, unsure how to answer, so he doesn't yet, carrying on with his task. He hangs up one of her sleeping shirts next—it had been his, truthfully, but she'd mistaken it as hers after—well, _After;_ in those early days when she'd had to relearn what was hers and what was his and he'd had to hide so desperately what was _theirs_ —and he'd let her keep it. She wore it better than he did, anyway.

(She'd shuffled into the kitchen the next morning wearing it, and by then Asra had fallen in love so many times he'd long ago lost count.)

It is, in part, why her question is so difficult to answer—he has fallen in love countless times, but he has only ever _been_ in love the once.

"Master?"

He turns, finally; she is kneeling across from him in the little space, having been tending to the rosemary. The leaves she'll dry out for use in the kitchen and the flowers she'll distill into oil for making her potions, and he knows this because he knows her now as well as he ever did, even though she's a little bit different but no less beloved for it.

When he looks at her, it's always split into fractal images: he sees her at her youngest, when he first met her _(how young he was, so ignorant of love and starved of it all the same),_ and several years older, when he first kissed her _(how foolish, to think love could last)._ He sees her crouched worriedly over him, tending to him in his illness one winter; and he sees her pinned beneath him, crying out for him that one glorious summer. He sees her laughing, wading knee-deep in the ocean waves; and he sees her smiling, huddled beside him in front of a warm fire. He sees her as she was the first time he lost her, and he sees her as she is now, as she finds her way back to herself, and to him.

When he looks at her, he sees a thousand mirrors, a thousand memories, a thousand reflections of her in each and every moment he fell in love—and every single one of them is another reminder of all that they've lost.

(How do you confess to loving someone when _I love you_ could very well become _I lost you_ when it slips from your mouth? When _devotion_ and _desolation_ taste too much alike on your tongue?)

He smiles without really having the heart for it.

"Just the once," he says, and means every word.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know I've written Rei before as coming off more subby, but she's totally a switch, so make of that what you will. ;)


	5. Where You're Always a Little Out of Reach

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still approximately two years before the start of the game, but set before chapters 1 & 3\. Rei finds herself always left behind, even when Asra doesn't say goodbye.

Asra, she's noticed, does not like saying goodbye.

It's always _be well,_ or _stay safe,_ or _don't forget to lock the doors while I'm gone._ She pins it down as one of his eccentricities, until she realizes he only does it when pertaining to her.

He has no trouble shooting off a jovial _"Bye!"_ when they're leaving the baker's, or to satisfied customers as they depart the shop. She's heard him bid farewell to a _spider_ once, after he'd caught one in the kitchen and released it to the safety of their balcony garden, waving it off with a jovial _"Bye bye!"_

So. Asra does not, in fact, have a problem with goodbyes, except when it comes to her.

(Why, then, is she the one he leaves behind the most?)

 

\---

 

He's leaving again.

"Do I get to know where you're going, this time?" she asks, wrapping a sticky rice cake in a banana leaf and tying it securely with twine.

"No," he says, cheerful, taking the rice cake from her with a smile and placing it carefully in his messenger bag. He ruffles her hair, the ends of it tickling the tops of her shoulders with their movement.

"Do I get to know when you'll be back?"

"Also no." He moves away, pulling some of his travel necessities from the shelf—his tarot deck, his compass, the poultice of aloe and witch hazel that she'd topped up for him a few days before. He moves to the bed, lifting the blankets, checking behind the pillows—looking for his scarf, probably.

She sighs, reaching under the dinner table to pull out the length of red fabric from his seat. One corner is looking worn; she could repair it, if he'd just stay another day, another hour, even—

She wonders why he keeps leaving. She worries it's because of her.

 _"Will_ you be back?" she asks, rubbing the fraying corner between her thumb and forefinger. She says it so quietly that she wonders if she even really meant for him to hear it.

He pauses in his search to look at her, _really_ look at her. She averts her gaze, refusing to meet his eyes even when he crosses over to stand in front of her.

 _"Rei,"_ he sighs, and she resists the urge to flinch. It sounds a lot like _disappointment._

(If she was _better,_ or _different,_ or _more_ than whatever she is right now, would he stay?)

"Of _course_ I'll be back," he says, placing a hand atop her head, smoothing down the hair he'd mussed earlier. He takes the scarf from her, the threads unraveling a little more when she lets go a half-second too slow. "Thank you," he says, wrapping it around his shoulders before he gives her a placating smile. "I'll bring you back something, alright? Whatever you want. Ask, and it's yours."

She bites back her first answer. _Don't go._

"How can I know what to ask for if I don't know where you're going?" she says instead, flashing him a smile. She means for it to look brave, but she thinks the way her lip trembles ruins the effect.

"Doesn't matter," Asra says, kind enough not to comment on it. _(Not kind enough to stay,_ something bitter hisses, and she wills that thought away. Asra is _kindness_ if anything is.) "I'll make a detour, wherever I need to. Heated mugroot from the Icefields? Spicy candied nuts from Drakr? Rainbow glass from Prakra? Anything you want, just name it."

(She only really wants him to _stay.)_

And there is something to the way he says _Anything you want_ that sounds terribly _lonely_ —that makes her hope he might want the same.

And yet he is leaving, still. She will never understand him.

"Something . . ." she begins, tentative, grasping for whatever words she can find. "Something that reminds you of me," she says at last. _Something that you can hold in your hand to make you feel a little less lonely until you come back._

He starts, blinking rapidly as if to process her words.

"Something that reminds me of you," he repeats, flat.

She's embarrassed, suddenly. _Why did she say that why did she say that why did she say that—?_

"I meant," she clarifies, "whatever you think I'll like."

(She doesn't tell him she'll cherish _anything,_ if it means he'll be home to give it to her.)

A beat. The double-thump of a nervous heart.

"Alright," he says, but when she peeks at his face his expression is unreadable.

He fixes his scarf over his nose and mouth, turning away, and she chases after him down the stairs to the shop proper, feeling a little lost. Faust is slumped on the glasstop counter, looking as dejected as she feels. Asra gives his familiar a farewell scritch on the chin.

"Look after Rei for me, alright, Faust?"

She perks up, giving him a little snakey salute with her tail, and he chuckles.

"Well, I'm off," he says, plopping his hat on his head, the charmingly ridiculous feather bobbing with the movement. _"Wards on the front door—"_

"—charged once in the morning, thrice at night," she recites from rote. "Back door locked, latched, and rubbed with rue each Sunday. I _know,_ Master."

His eyes soften, the only thing visible between the high edge of his scarf and the low brim of his hat. What little she can see of his face looks terribly fond, but also, somehow, terribly sad.

"Of course," he breathes. He reaches out as if to ruffle her hair again, but he pauses, then pulls back, leaving her feeling a little bereft. "Stay out of trouble."

She lifts one corner of her mouth in a half-smile. _"You're_ trouble," she says, teasing. She does not want him to leave with this heaviness lingering between them, a weighty tether stretching across the miles. "You might as well ask me to stay away from _you."_

There is that loneliness, again, when he laughs, quiet and strained. _"Perhaps,"_ is all he says.

He's gone before she can ask what he means.

 

\---

 

He doesn't _stop_ leaving, even in her dreams.

She sprints after him under a pulsing magenta sky, but he doesn't stop, or even turn around.

_"Wait!"_

The wind picks up, sending desert dust dancing between them, until a wall of rust-colored sand hides him completely from view.

 

\---

 

It's exhausting, chasing after someone who doesn't want to be caught.

It's exhausting, being the one who waits.

It's exhausting, wondering if he's always meant to leave her behind.

 _(He'll be back he'll be back he'll be back he_ promised—)

 

\---

 

Vesuvia is deserted.

She wanders through streets made unfamiliar by silence, heading south, following the sound of water that calls to some primal part of her.

She emerges onto a rocky stretch of land. Pebbles and bleached-bone driftwood; an abandoned outrigger boat that feels _familiar,_ somehow, though it has no cause to be. _It should have a sail,_ she thinks, and wonders where that thought came from. It takes her a moment to realize she's on a beach. It's a little jarring—how dull, how _bleak_ it is. _Where's the sand?_ she wonders. _Where's the sun?_

But the sea is there, and Asra in it, wading in up to his knees, then his thighs. The electric tingle of a gathering storm is in the air.

 _No,_ she thinks, _it's too dangerous in this weather!_

He seems to be saying something. She shouldn't be able to hear him over the crashing waves, but she does, and what he says is this:

"Come back, come back to me, _please."_

 _Where are you going?_ she wants to call out to him. _I'm right here!_

She makes to follow him, but her dream dissolves into mist the moment she sets foot in the water.

 

\---

 

She will keep running after him. She doesn't know how to do anything else. She doesn't know if that's even an _option._

(Maybe someday he'll let her catch up.)

 

\---

 

The grandiose hallways are silent. There is a sea of masks, but no faces, a thousand ballgowns, but nobody moves.

Except—

She catches a glimpse of white, the swish of his distinctive coat, and she runs after him without thinking.

 _"Master!"_ she calls out, weaving through statues of party goers, frozen in time. "Master, _wait!"_

She catches up to him, finally, in the ballroom, at the bottom of a set of stairs leading up to a dark, consuming gloom. She grabs him by the arm, spinning him around to face her, and sees his face go slack in surprise the moment he sees her.

 _"Asra,"_ she pleads, "stop _running!"_

A quiet gasp. A haunted look. He looks down at where her hand makes indentations on his bicep.

The expression he makes when he looks back up at her is nothing short of _mournful._

 _"I'm sorry,"_ he says, before the creeping blackness at the top of the stairs descends in a rush, shrouding them both in darkness before she can wonder what he's apologizing for.

 

\---

 

She is always tired when she wakes up from these dreams.

She runs a hand over his side of the bed, cold these last few days without him to warm it, and sighs. Faust pops up at the edge of the mattress and slithers up next to her, hissing softly. She radiates concern, though whether she is projecting her own feelings or merely reflecting Rei's own anxiety back, she does not know.

"I'm sure he's fine. Right, Faust?" she says, more to herself than anything. Faust just tips her head to the side, as enigmatic as her elusive Master. Rei worries her lip, but of course it changes nothing. "He has to be."

_(He'll be back. He'll be back. He'll be back.)_

She'll scrub her throat raw if saying it will really make it true.

 

\---

 

It's two weeks and half, closer to three, before he comes back home.

He returns during the lunch hour, when the shop is briefly closed. It's a warm day; she's propped open the backdoor to let in the cool breeze that rises from the little canal flowing along the back of the shop. She's sweeping the backroom floor when he appears in the open doorway, the sunlight reflecting off the canal water illuminating his moon-white hair.

She drops the broom and is in his arms before it hits the floor.

He stumbles with her back out the door, steadying them both on the narrow walkway barely wide enough for two people abreast, just managing to avoid tumbling into the canal. When he's over the shock of her enthusiasm, he goes very, very still, and for a moment fear grips her chest because _what right does she have to presume—_

But Asra just laughs, a sound that echoes across the water, and returns her hug, his fingers smoothing over her unruly hair.

"I missed you too, Rei!" he says, grinning, but there is a smugness about it that makes her twitch, a teasing in his tone that _rankles_. She knows it is unreasonable of her, but she hates hates _hates_ being the one who worries, the one who waits, the one always left behind.

She pulls away to give him a piece of her mind, but stops short when she spots the red line over his lip, and another one on the edge of his jaw, marring his skin along the same angle.

She grips his chin, gentle but firm, ignoring how he attempts to squirm away. Her earlier ire is forgotten; she's upset now for a different reason altogether.

She really is too soft on him, she knows. She can't help it.

_(She's always going to be the one who cares more, isn't she?)_

"Master, what _happened?"_ she demands, tipping his face down so she can examine him better.

Asra shifts, uneasy, like a child who knows he's in trouble, and tries to pull her wrist away. It doesn't work.

"It's nothing," he says, glancing away. His fingertips still press against the flutter of her pulse.

She pouts. "I understand that I am only your apprentice—" He frowns at that. _Odd._ "—but I am also an _apothecary,_ and as a professional, I can see that it is very clearly _not_ nothing." She glares at him until he sighs, posture going slack.

 _"I tripped,"_ he mumbles.

She pulls back, hands on her hips. "You _tripped,"_ she repeats, flat, and he nods, sheepish.

She sighs, and gestures for him to come into the backroom, where she bids him sit on one of the cushioned stools by the reading table so she can examine him again. Her fingers are light against his skin, and this time he lets her move him willingly.

"It's recent," she murmurs. "Why didn't you heal it?"

"It's not serious." He shrugs, and she does not like how cavalier he is with his safety, but she keeps that to herself, for now. _(He's back. He's back.)_ "I was in a hurry."

She tries to run her thumb over the cut on his lip, but pulls away when he hisses, however quietly, and _tsks_ lightly to herself when the scar remains. She does not have his touch for healing, her hands better suited to herbs and ointments and oils. "And why were you in a hurry?"

"Because—" he falters, looking away, mumbling his next words so softly that she's not sure if she hears him right, "because I was almost home."

 _It is only the lighting,_ she convinces herself, _that makes his cheeks look dark._ She turns away, hurrying into the washroom to grab a bowl of water and a clean towel.

"What did I even make you that poultice for?" she grouses, setting them down on the table with a huff. She dips the cloth in the water and wrings out the excess before dabbing at his cuts. "Why can't you be— _no,_ don't look at me like that, I am _upset_ with you."

He's _still_ looking at her, hands folded obediently in his lap, a fond smile on his face. His expression is soft, with only the barest trace of the loneliness she'd glimpsed before he left.

 _Don't look at me like that,_ she thinks, begging. _Not if you're just going to leave again._

"Don't you want your present?" he asks instead, grin turning cheeky.

(She has only ever wanted him to stay. Barring that, she only wants him to keep coming home.)

She crosses her arms. "This is _not_ going to make me less upset with you."

"I'll give you your present anyway," he says, cheerfully undaunted. He rummages around in his bag and pulls out a delicate hair comb, the top band embellished with turquoise stones carved in the shape of stars. "Your hair's getting longer," he explains. "I thought you'd like something to keep it back while you work."

She looks down at it. It's beautiful in itself, but more than that, it says _I was thinking of you._ It says _I remembered you._

It says _I'm sorry I had to say goodbye._

"I got it in blue," he says, holding it out to her, childlike excitement in his eyes. The comb is a lovely shade—the same color as her magic, on the few occasions she gets it to work. He smiles. "It's your favorite color, isn't it?"

She takes it, turning it over in her hands to marvel as it catches the light. "It's purple, actually," she mumbles absently.

He startles. "What?"

She blinks. "My favorite color," she says slowly, meeting his widening eyes, "is purple." She's not certain why she says it. She only knows it's true.

His eyebrows are climbing steadily higher toward his hairline.

"But it's lovely," she says, worried that he'll take it the wrong way. "It's a lovely color. I love it. _Really."_ She fixes it hastily into her hair, making sure it keeps the strands away from her face, and then adds, rather lamely, "Thank you, Master."

"I—" he starts, stops, the shakes his head. "It's nothing," he murmurs, almost too fast to catch, and rises only to walk briskly out of the backroom, muttering something or other about _hungry._

She stands still for a moment, listening to the _clip clip_ of his boots on the stairs, before she allows herself a small smile, running her fingers over the comb. There's magic inlaid in it—his, definitely, though what purpose it serves she cannot tell.

And then, sighing, she grabs the damp washcloth and heads upstairs, chasing after Asra once more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> FUN HEADCANON:
> 
> Asra doesn't like saying goodbye because he didn't when he walked out the first/last(?) time, so now it either hurts too much or he feels he doesn't have the _right._
> 
> _(:3 」∠)_


	6. Where We Both Relearn How to Breathe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Slight gore (although I guess _slight_ is relative, so watch out). Lots of self-hate. Implied PTSD. Also, chapter is just really Sad.
> 
> Set in the first month or so post-amnesia. Asra learns how to live with his mistakes, Rei relearns how to live.

Some days he feels he will never be clean.

He fears that the ashes from that day have burrowed under the broken skin of his hands, making their way into his bloodstream and staining his soul.

_Sinner,_ they whisper, their jagged edges grating against his own jagged heart. _See how your folly has fouled her. By your arrogance she has become naught but ash and bone._

_Sinner._

_Sinner!_

_It was your sin that cast her into the fire._

He is full of sand. It blows through his empty soul, battering at his insides. But no matter how they scrape, the sharp edges of his grief do not dull, do not wear down with saltwater or sand or seconds stretching into infinite time.

Wrong cannot undo wrong; he knows this, and yet, _and yet—_

_I need her back,_ he'd begged. _As she was._

_As she was,_ the Devil grinned, and returned her to him in the state she was in just before she died. Hollow cheeks, sunken eyes. Her cropped-short hair spikes instead of curls, barely brushing her chin.

He can hear taunting, always, in the back of his mind: _Look upon her,_ the Devil jeers. _See her as she was when you left her to her fate._

But if this is the punishment for his transgressions, he will take it a thousand times over, because she is here, breathing _(breathing!),_ and her eyes, when she opens them, are clear—unmarred by the red taint that lingers still in the waterways of the Flooded District, and the South End, and all the rest of Vesuvia's slums.

She is healthy, she is whole, she is here. It's enough. He will _make_ it enough.

 

\---

 

She does not remember him. She does not remember anything.

_(She is here she is here it is enough—)_

She cannot walk. Cannot speak. Some mornings she will wake unable to remember even the previous day.

(Is it _really?)_

The words become routine, in time.

My name is Asra. _Asra._ I'm going to take care of you.

(The pain that comes with them, however, does not.)

But—she wakes, still. She wakes, and she breathes. That is something.

His demons quiet, somewhat, when he watches her breaths deepen, watches her lashes flutter. Her nose scrunches so beautifully when she yawns, and he has never been so awed by the sight of eyes sliding open.

She is here, and he can work with that.

(She is here, but he has never felt dirtier. His sins have never loomed so large.)

In his youthful folly, spurred by his loneliness, he had laid claim to her and called it love; by his selfishness he had willfully abandoned her; by his own damnable hubris he had sought to bring her back. He'd begged the Devil's mercy and bartered away Lucio's salvation, and finally he'd snatched her back from Death itself, like the little orphan thief he's always been, who only knows how to take, and take, and _take._

A pilfered body, a stolen soul, bound together by his broken, bleeding heart—the only part freely given—and she had been returned to him, a chimera of all his malefactions, a patchwork shrine to all his sins.

(Blood magic and bargains; the shadows in his soul stretch ever longer.)

Sinner. _Sinner._ He will go to hell singing if it means he can watch her wake, morning after morning after morning, just like this.

_(Let him burn. Let him burn. Let the fire take him instead.)_

 

\---

 

The first time he triggers her memories, it takes _days_ before he fixes her—days when he tries everything, _gives_ everything, _please, just put her back, as she was, as she was, as she was—_

(He has always known the world is not kind. But it is unfathomably _cruel,_ that she should suffer so for his crimes.)

_I will take my punishment,_ he thinks, _but please, please, she has been hurt enough—_

He falls to his knees before her, finally, as she sits slumped on their bed, her shoulders curled concave into her chest. He kneels, and kisses her hands, supplicant and penitent both, devotion and contrition laid upon her unmoving fingers with every press of his lips.

"Forgive me, forgive me," he sobs, saltwater staining her hands. _"Forget_ me, just come _back."_

Magic travels from his palms to hers, climbing up her arms in tendrils of light until they concentrate in swirling patterns over her heart, and at her temples. She takes a shuddering breath, blinking once, before he lunges up to catch her as she slumps forward, fast asleep.

He lays her head in the crook of his neck as he cradles her, rocking them both gently back and forth, and weeps and weeps and _weeps._ When he is wrung dry he looks at her sleeping face and does not know if the tears on her cheeks are hers or his.

 

\---

 

He dreams of her, once, standing on the shores of the Lazaret, swaying gently as she sings a soft requiem to the sea.

_"We love who we love_  
_We find what we seek_  
_See there the dove_  
_That sails through the bleak—"_

_"Rei,"_ he whispers, and her name tastes like an inadequate apology on his tongue.

She turns to face him, and her plague-red eyes freeze him in place, his muscles seizing and rendering him unable to move.

_"The dove she does shake_  
_For cold are her bones_  
_Her heart it does break_  
_For loss of her home—"_

She takes a step toward him, then another, and another. Moonlight catches a dull glint in her hand as she raises a rusty, blood-crusted knife—

_"We toil through the frost_  
_And ache for the sun_  
_For grief never lost_  
_And love never won—"_

—and brings it down, driving it into his chest, cleaving a line down his front. More black sand spills out of the wound. He is full to choking of it. _(He is filthy filthy filthy he will never be clean.)_ She reaches into the cavity and takes out his beating heart—except it's only a shriveled pomegranate, and when she cracks it open it crumbles into dust.

"You have loved and lost," she says, cradling his face in her soot-blackened hands, dead eyes staring into his soul and finding it wanting, "and what have you got to show for it?"

She pushes him, gentle as the flick of a bird's wing, but he tumbles over backward all the same, collapsing onto the gray shore. The earth turns to quicksand beneath him, and he watches the stars wink out above him one by one as he's buried under grit and the weight of his own guilt.

The last thing he sees is her face—impassive, uncaring, as he disappears into the dirt of her grave.

"You will never lose your grief," she says. "You will never win her love."

The darkness swallows him, then silence.

(He does not know how the song ends.)

 

\---

 

He wakes choking, and rolls up to sit with his feet planted on the floor in a single smooth motion—an easy thing to do, since he always sleeps on the very edge of the bed anyway. The morning sunlight is too bright, making his head pound.

He runs his hands down his face, breathing hard, and feels her shift behind him, wrapping her arms around his waist to draw him close. Her forehead presses between his shoulder blades, and he wonders if she can hear his heart shatter and reform at her unexpected closeness.

Her voice is still rough with sleep when she utters the articulation that he has come to recognize as his name.

_"A-ah,"_ she stutters, still tongue-tied, still unable to speak. Her arms tighten around his middle, comforting him as he has so often done for her when she wakes up in a panic. "A-ah, kay?"

He places a hand over hers, his thumb brushing back and forth over her skin. It grounds him like nothing else, tethering him to the here and now.

"Good morning. Yes, I'm okay." It's a miracle that his voice doesn't shake. He throws her a reassuring smile over his shoulder. "Hungry?"

Her eyes narrow as she scrutinizes his face. She does not know him as she used to, but she can still tell, somehow, when he is lying—and more importantly, when he needs her to let it go. She sighs. (She brushes away his sins so easily.) "Yeh."

"I'll see what's in the kitchen, alright?"

He extricates himself from her hold and pads to the kitchen, studiously ignoring the feeling of her eyes on his back. There is some of the sticky rice he had scoured the markets for, specifically, plus half a leftover chicken breast in the ice box. He hunts down some garlic, and ginger, and the rest of the spices he needs, and cobbles together some porridge.

When it's done and ladeled into two steaming bowls, he pokes his head out of the kitchen to find her sitting up in bed, playing with Faust on her lap.

"It's a nice day," he says, crossing back over to her. "Wanna eat in the garden?"

She nods, smiling, and holds out her hands to him, trusting. _(Too_ trusting. Would she still smile for him, if she knew what he'd done?) He gathers her against him as she winds her arms around his neck, hefting her up with little difficulty, and carries her out onto the balcony. She is feather-light in his arms, all hollow bird bones and paper skin, fragile as glass.

He is gentle, gentle, when he sets her down on the bench in the shade of the pergola. He forces his jagged edges to dull, just for her, so she doesn't cut herself on the sharpness of his grief.

He had not cared, before, with the others. Let Ilya hurl himself against the cutting edge of Asra's pain, let him come away bloodied and battered. Let Lucio bruise his ego on Asra's contempt—it is much, _much_ kinder than he deserves. Even Nadi, whom he tried not to cut, whom he could find a little peace with, once in a blue while, could only get through to him in places where his brambles and thorns had already broken off.

But for Rei—the one he hurts for, the one he hurt most—for her, he forces himself to gentle; for her, he tames his love into something soft.

Because he had loved her so _fiercely,_ once. Like a wild thing, with claws. Loud, and clumsy, and possessive as only an urchin can be, when faced with the one good thing life has ever deigned to give him.

(He can still hear her aunt's warm, croaky laugh as she playfully warned her niece of him. _"Be careful with this one, Starshine,"_ Miss Embri had said, winking, and ruffled his hair in a rare show of affection and approval. _"Rough diamonds can cut.")_

And he had. He _had._ He'd tripped over himself falling in love with her, and she'd stumbled and fallen right alongside him, laughingly thanking him for it even when she skinned her knees on his inexperienced but fervent infatuation. If she had known how he would hurt her in the end, would she still have loved him?

(If _he_ had known how he would hurt her, would he still have loved her, knowing he could spare her that pain?)

Useless conjecture. He does not have time for it. _They_ do not have the time for it, because they are living in the wreckage of his mistakes, and he does not know where to start fixing it.

Here are the facts: he loved her and his love was a death sentence.

He cannot love her now as he did (she is not as she was; they are not what they were), so instead he loves her like this: he sets her down on the bench and arranges her legs in a comfortable position, maneuvering her feet atop a clean rag (the balcony floor is dusty; he has forgotten to sweep, these past few weeks). He slips back inside briefly to fetch their bowls, along with her old woolen shawl, which he drapes around her slim shoulders, tucking it snugly around her neck (she is always _cold,_ these days; he wonders if, among other things, her body has forgotten how to be warm). He hands over her porridge, made with the sticky kind of rice she likes, the chicken bits shredded into bite-size pieces (he wraps her bowl in a spare kitchen towel so she doesn't scald her hands).

"Comfortable?" he asks, tucking a stray lock of hair behind her ear. She nods happily, and he smooths a hand over her tangled hair—he will have to comb the knots out, later; perhaps he should trim it, so it'll grow back more evenly.

He makes himself soft, for her. He, street-hardened, sorrow-roughened, learns to love her with aloof, everyday kindnesses, with quiet, tender attention.

She takes a small spoonful of her porridge, and her pleased, grateful smile lights up her whole face. The guilt is so overwhelming that he has to look away. He does not deserve gratitude. He does not even deserve forgiveness, though he will beg for it anyway.

"Ah, these plants are all looking a little thirsty, aren't they?" he says instead, glancing around at the garden they had grown together. He has neglected it, as he has neglected so many things, and now the place that had once been her sanctuary is paying the price. _(No more. No more. We have lost too much to the fire already.)_

He waves a hand in a complicated pattern, and summons a cool, damp mist that wraps around the plants. They perk up quickly, unfurling their leaves and putting out flowers until the garden breathes again, alive.

When he turns back to her, she is frowning down at her hands, her porridge resting on the bench beside her. She wiggles her fingers, and he sees how her helplessness _chafes_ —unable to walk, unable to speak, unable to tap into the magic he knows she can feel in her veins. Her frustration builds, and it comes out of her fingers in tiny, uncontrolled sparks of flame. _(No more fire no more fire haven't we lost enough?)_ He keeps his expression neutral as kneels in front of her and takes her hands in his own, his own cooling magic dousing her ire.

"We'll work on your magic some other time," he soothes her, rubbing her hands. _"Slowly,_ okay?"

She huffs, dejected, but relents. "Kay."

He smiles, straightening. "Eat."

But she catches his wrist, tugging at his arm as her brow furrows imperiously. "A-ah, _eat."_

Her tone is firm, brooking no argument, but concern is clear in her eyes.

(He forgets, sometimes, that she had loved him just as fiercely—that she must be capable of it, still.)

"Haha, alright," he says, settling down beside her. She shuffles closer in increments—a challenge, he knows, since she still cannot move her legs the way she wants. But she tries, anyway, and he cannot help the way his heart squeezes when she smiles as he closes the last few inches between them.

Around them, the garden breathes; she breathes, and Asra gives himself permission to relearn how to live with air in his lungs instead of sand.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> y'all ever think about how Asra probably hates himself but literally isn't allowed to talk about it because I do


	7. Where I Can Think of Nobody Else But You

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Last chapter was kinda heavy, yeah? Have some smut. ৲( ᵒ 3ᵕ )৴♡
> 
> Also, I'm sorry this is so non-chronological, but what can you do? It's not gonna change friends, it'll just be even more of a clusterfuck of a timeline from here.
> 
> A continuation of Chapter 3, of sorts, so still two-ish years before the game begins. Rei still misses Asra, and it's getting to be a problem. NSFW!

_This,_ Rei thinks, _has got to stop._

She lies on their bed, breathing hard, having woken up from yet another too-strange, too-real fantasy.

She reaches up, dragging her fingers along the headboard until she finds the sigil Asra had carved there months ago, the first time he'd seen her wake up from a nightmare. His magic still lingers in the grooves, brushing against her fingertips with a feeling like surface tension, calm and cool.

 _To encourage good dreams,_ he'd explained, barely even glancing at the sigil in his grimoire that he was supposed to be copying as he'd worked his knife into the wood. _And to guard against nightmares._

True enough, she's been having less unpleasant dreams lately. She's not sure if she likes the trade off, though.

Because she's _dreamed_ of him, again.

They had been walking through elegant marble hallways again, in her dream. Asra had smiled, a playful moon-curve under the blue midnight sky of his half-mask, and he'd pulled her down a deserted corridor and into a hidden alcove, out of sight from prying eyes.

 _(He likes having her to himself,_ she'd thought, and then wondered, _but how would_ she _know?)_

His hands had wandered—down her arms, up the skin exposed by her backless dress—and his laughter was low, and wicked with want.

"I can't _wait_ for later," he'd purred against her neck, threat and promise both, as he teased her with kisses that could barely be called such, light as they were, mere ghosts of affection brushed across her heated skin. The wood of his mask had pressed hard against her jaw.

 _"Asra—"_ she'd mewled, already soaked, which he soon found out for himself when he'd let his hands slide beneath the slitted skirt of the fancy dress she's sure she's never owned. He'd cupped her mound, applying a steady pressure that had made her go slowly mad as she ground against his hand.

He had hummed, _delighted._ "You're right, though," he had whispered against her collar bone. "Taking you here and now is _very_ tempting."

And then he had caught her cry of pleasure in the palm of his free hand as he slipped his fingers under her smalls and into her cunt, plunging them into her again and again and _again,_ until her legs had trembled uncontrollably and she'd come undone, drenching his hand in her fluids.

He had grinned at her, predator-sharp, his eyes glinting with mischief behind the mask as he'd licked his fingers clean.

"Just _think,"_ he'd whispered, breath hot against her ear, "this is nothing compared to _later."_

She snaps back to the present with a strangled whine. She can't keep this up. She can't keep dreaming of Asra—of his hands on her skin, his mouth against hers, his roguish smile as he turns the full force of his attention on her—

_"Argh—!"_

She wonders, briefly, if she can ask him to alter the sigil somehow. _Master,_ she'd say, _are there any sigils to stop me from having shockingly inappropriate dreams about you?_

And what a conversation _that_ would be, right?

(She thinks she'd rather have the nightmares, at this point.)

She presses her fists against her eyes and tries— _tries_ —to take deep, calming breaths. She can't keep _thinking_ of him like this, because she'll go mad when he _does_ come back and acts the way he always does: aloof, detached, distant.

_Uninterested._

(And already that thought pains her more than it should. How _dare_ she. Who gave her the _right?)_

She _shouldn't_ keep thinking about him like this, because Asra is her _master_ and she is his _apprentice,_ and it is a disservice to his kindness to imagine him as anything else. Anything _more._

(No matter how she wishes he might be.)

She sighs. Asra isn't home yet. He won't be home for—oh, another week, at least, if his previous journeys follow any discernible pattern.

And—that's a good thing, right? It means she'll have time to get over herself, and be less likely to jump him as soon as he walks through the door.

(And if the pang in her heart at their lengthy separation is unavoidable, well—at least no one else has to know.)

 

\---

 

She tries to apply herself to other things. Things worth putting effort in. Things that don't involve her taking cold baths in the middle of the night.

She immerses herself in her herbs and potions, mixing batches of remedies for things that range from the common cold to food poisoning to infertility. She restocks the shelves, and waters the garden, and puts their home in order, though she pauses at the curtained-off area of the backroom where Asra keeps his private things, before she shakes her head and walks away, leaving it untouched. She keeps up her studies, poring over books of spells and tarot; she still hasn't memorized all the Swords and she wants to learn them by the time Asra gets back.

She wants him to be proud of her.

Because Asra is—too young, certainly, to have had many other apprentices, or even _any_ other apprentices at all.

(How _old_ is he, anyway? He's never said. He's never even told her his _birthday,_ though he's told her Faust's, as strange and whimsical as he always is.)

But, for one reason or another, he's decided to take her under his tutelage, perhaps because of how _powerful_ and _gifted_ he always says she is. She doesn't _feel_ like it, but he makes her think she _could_ be, if she tried.

(Because when he tells her those things, eyes shining with wonder, it's hard not to believe him.)

She'd _like_ to be, anyway, even if only to make him smile.

So she pulls back her hair with a turquoise comb and a sense of purpose, and mixes potions until it's muscle memory. She practices her spells—except for fire, tempted though she is, because she's sure he'd be distinctly _not_ -proud to return to a burned-down home. She sits bent over books long into the night, and tries to tell herself it's due to studiousness and not simple, cowardly avoidance of the images that wait for her in her sleep.

(She wishes she could believe her own lies as easily as she believes his honey-sweet words.)

 

\---

 

The next time she dreams of him, they're in a mud-brick house she doesn't recognize, surrounded by homey furniture and a dazzling display of potted plants on every surface that can hold them. The air is dry, arid—but with the tell-tale crackling snap of a gathering storm.

 _(The desert,_ she thinks, absently. _We're in the desert and we're alone and he's all_ mine.)

Outside the window, gray clouds are roiling in the sky, thunder building up to a crescendo before the inevitable downpour.

And Asra—Asra is naked beneath her, trembling faintly as he runs worshipful hands up her bare waist to cup her breasts, his eyes fogged over with lust and what might, she too-foolishly hopes, be love.

She's rocking against him, his cock trapped between the press of their hips, sliding smoothly along the slick lips of her cunt, making them both moan. He pinches her nipples—already pebbled in the steadily-chilling air—and she bites her lip to stifle the needy whine that rises in her throat.

"Mm, _no,"_ he reprimands her lightly, "let me hear you."

He pulls her down by the waist to grind harder against him, canting his hips up to meet hers, and her mouth falls open in a wanton mewl. The white thatch of hair surrounding his cock rubs her clit just the right way, and she shudders in his hold, already teetering on the edge of release.

 _"Aaah—sra,"_ she whimpers, balancing herself with both hands on his stomach. "Asra, _fuck."_

"Heh, aren't I?" he grins, wholly unashamed, and kneads her breasts in his palms. His touch is desert-hot; she thinks, a little wildly, that he must be leaving scorch marks on her skin.

(Let him. _Let him._ Let her be marked as _his.)_

 _"Want you,"_ she tells him, words she'd never say awake leaving her lips with barely a token resistance. _"Need you,_ Asra, _please."_

His violet eyes, dark as the whipping storm, go suddenly, achingly soft.

"You have me," he whispers, as he releases his grip, letting her rise only so he can align his cock to her entrance. "You always do, Rei."

And it takes very little persuading for her to sink down, down, _down,_ until he's fully sheathed in her and her walls are clenching tight, tight, _tight_ around him, drawing cries of pleasure from his kiss-swollen lips. Outside, the storm finally breaks, the wind screaming through the desert dunes as the slate-gray rain comes pouring down, but in here there is only him and her and the quiet, panting sighs of heady, intoxicating filth—honey-sweet utterances of _yes, yes, you feel so good, keep going._ She leans back, supporting herself against his bent knees, and begins to fuck herself on his cock. Asra's hands smooth up and down her thighs, at once possessive and tender—like the touch of someone who wants something he's not sure he's allowed to take.

"You're so _beautiful,"_ he murmurs, like a softly-whispered prayer. "You've always been the most beautiful thing in the world, to me."

She _feels_ beautiful. Asra doesn't always tell her things, but when he does it's hard not to believe him. How could she not, when he looks at her like she's the storm that howls outside, like she's the fire that crackles welcoming and warm in the hearth, like she's everything that's _good_ in the world?

She tries to press her lips to fight back a moan, feeling so wonderfully _full,_ but then she remembers _let me hear you,_ and when the sound reaches the top of her throat she releases it in a gasp of his name.

(What a simple, unparalleled happiness that would be, if she could call him that outside of dreams. _Master_ always did feel ill-fitted in her mouth.)

He answers with her own, said so tenderly with reverent lips, and that's all it takes to push her past the tipping point and headlong into sweet release. She comes as he continues to pound into her, each thrust hitting her _just right,_ prolonging her pleasure until he, too, finishes with a cry, spilling into her. She shudders at the heat, already skirting the line of _oversensitive,_ but she refuses to move away, keeping him within her shuddering walls as she takes, takes, _takes_ every last drop of his seed.

She feels his spend trickle out of her as she eases off him, and bites her lip against the groan that threatens to leave her when she feels their combined fluids drip down her thighs. Asra tugs her closer, and she leans slowly forward until she's crouched over him, arms folded against his chest. Her hair falls in dark curtains around their faces, and that's—that's _strange,_ isn't it? Her hair has never been that long.

But—pressing matters: he is so _close,_ close enough that she could kiss him, close enough that she's sure he wouldn't pull away if she tried. So she does, and his mouth moves so seamlessly against her own, like a well-practiced dance of lips and tongues and soft, sweet sighs.

(She needs to stop _thinking_ of him like this, but if she's already dreaming of him _anyway_ she might as well make it count.)

When they pull apart, he runs a thumb down her spine, catching the drops of sweat that have pooled on her skin. He catches her eye when she shivers, and he smiles.

(She is certain she has never seen him smile like this, not for her or anyone.)

"I miss you, Rei," he says, with what feels like the weight of a thousand goodbyes behind his words. "I miss you so much." Or perhaps it is the heavy burden of just a single goodbye left unsaid.

(Either way, it is still impossible _not_ to believe him, even when she _knows,_ in her heart, that he will keep leaving her, again and again.)

She shifts so that her hands are cupping his face, and kisses the corner of his mouth.

"When are you coming home?" she asks, pouting and plaintive, lingering against his cheek.

He laughs, and it's a rueful, self-deprecating thing. He reaches up to tuck a strand of hair gently, so gently, behind her ear.

"When I can finally stop myself from thinking of you like this," he says, and his perfect echo of her thoughts startles her so badly that she snaps awake, alone in the empty room above the shop.

And then she groans, because she's _dreamed_ of him _again_ and she really needs to _stop._

 _Best of luck to both of us, then,_ she thinks, her unspoken reply to his last words, and then sighs in frustration, because really, she's the only one who needs it, isn't she? Asra—the Asra that exists outside her lurid fantasies—doesn't _think_ of her the way the _thinks_ of him.

(And what does that make her but a fool, that when he says he'll miss her she'll still always, _always_ believe it?)


	8. Where You Only Ever Call Me by My Name

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope y'all made the most of that breather chap, because we are B A C K to our regularly scheduled angst, friends.
> 
> Set around three months post-amnesia. A not-quite-stranger comes to visit, and Asra has decisions to make.

With her hand in his, it's easy enough to imagine nothing has changed.

Rei has been growing stronger, these past months; her steps are steadier, her words clearer—though her magic remains dormant, and erratic the few times it does appear. Her memories, too, have not returned, though he has tried to make her remember six times already since she woke, to varying degrees of failure.

But she is here, bright-eyed, with her fingers twined trusting and warm between his; it is as much a victory as any.

The market is bustling with the midmorning rush. Rei tries to make herself small beside him, curling into herself; she is uneasy in the crowd, but still she takes in the whirlwind of noise and color with a quiet curiousity that he fondly—if a little bittersweetly—recognizes. They pass by a merchant surrounded by cages of hammered brass, and her eyes are immediately drawn to the jewel-toned birds within, singing and squawking in turns.

"Want one?" he whispers playfully, and she stumbles adorably, a blush dusting the tops of her cheeks as she shakes her head vehemently no.

It makes him laugh, the sound carrying high and bright over the cacophony of the market.

_Oh, good,_ he thinks, _because if you did, I don't think Tulin would ever forgive me._

He glances toward the shadowed eaves of the rooftops, meeting the sharp gaze of her familiar, always watching over her from an unobtrusive distance. The osprey gives him a dirty look, and Asra has to fight back a grin as he leads them further into the thick of the market, with Tulin following high above them on silent wings.

Rei's head swivels around as they walk past a myriad display of scarves in every hue and fabric (she has always been fascinated with interesting patterns in cloth, he remembers) and he smiles, indulgent, as he changes their course and makes a beeline for the stall. He watches her run tentative fingers over the merchandise, admiring this delicate lace or that intricate embroidery, and he leans down so she can hear him over the din of hawking and haggling.

"I'll be right over there buying vegetables," he says, jerking a thumb at the greengrocer's stall. "Why don't you stay here and pick something out? When I'm done shopping for dinner, I'll buy it for you."

Her gaze snaps up to his face, her mouth curving in a crescent-moon grin.

_"Really?"_ she rasps out, eyes shining.

(He has missed missed _missed_ that smile.)

"Yes, really," he laughs, and coaxes Faust out from under his shirt, draping her over Rei's shoulders. His familiar gives her a friendly squeeze and throws him an understanding look.

_Watch!_ Faust promises, and he gives her a scritch on the chin for her trouble.

"Pick out anything you want and hold onto it. I'll be back soon," he tells Rei, smoothing down her hair before crossing over to the grocer's stall to pick up some necessities for dinner. They'd had chicken yesterday, so maybe fish today; he could make the sour soup she liked that he still doesn't quite know how to make right but might as well practice—

He's in the middle of haggling over the price of tomatoes when a clear voice rings out over the market—

_"Sister?"_

—and Asra whirls around to see Rei trying to tug her wrist out of an insistent grip.

_Trouble,_ Faust says in his mind, and he immediately abandons the produce he was after as he weaves through the thickening crowd back to her, his heart thudding a fretful rhythm against his ribcage. His senses heighten as his panic rises, to his detriment—the sun is too bright; the noise of the market too loud. The air is too hot on his skin, and uncomfortably dusty, mingling with the sweat beading at the back of his neck.

"You're mistaken," he hears Rei say, eyes darting around to look for him. She looks ready to bolt.

The stranger's voice starts talking rapidly in a language Asra hasn't heard in a long time; he is not quite so fluent in it himself, but he picks out the words _No_ and _Sister_ and finally _Rei,_ spoken in increasingly agitated tones.

Upon reaching them, Asra immediately yanks her hand out of the stranger's hold, pulling her behind himself as he stares the man down.

Another string of foreign words, spat out with venom, and then the man's eyes widen as he recognizes him and says, _"Asra?"_

The man's features are sharper than hers—all straight angles whereas her face softly curves—but the inky hair is the same, as are the eyes, dark brown and blazing bright. It's the accent that seals it, though—a lilting, almost sing-song cadence, a musical rise and fall that shifts seamlessly to speaking Trader's Common.

"It _is_ you, isn't it? Asra."

It's so strange hearing his name in her brother's mouth. Right accent, wrong voice.

"Arion," Asra greets him, still a little on guard. Behind him, Rei is grasping his shirt, breaths short and shaky against the fabric.

Arion crosses his arms, expression darkening as he looks at his sister, cowering behind Asra's back.

"You have some explaining to do," he growls. "And _fast."_

People are starting to stare, and Asra feels Rei's fingers tighten further in his shirt. She never did like crowds, but now—

"Arion," he says, hands up in a placating gesture. "I'll talk, but not here, please—"

"Why not? Why doesn't she recognize me, Asra? What in the _hells_ is going on?"

_Friend scared,_ Faust informs him from where she's made herself scarce in Rei's shirt during all the commotion. He resists the urge to take her hand and run. People are whispering now, and the susurrus buzzes irritatingly in his ears like so many bees, grating on his already-frazzled nerves. _He's_ never liked crowds either.

"Just—calm down, please—"

"No. _Explain,_ Asra!"

Arion lunges forward, making as if to grab Asra by the shirt—

—before something warm and _forceful_ surges from behind Asra, passing through him harmlessly like an ocean wave through a net, straining to gather its nebulous form into something solid enough to _push_ —

—and Arion is flung backward a good few feet, landing hard on his back with a graceless thud. He groans as he sits up, winded, and looks up at them with his wide eyes reflecting shock and confusion and _hurt_ —because _he_ recognizes that magic, too, and it isn't Asra's.

Rei is _shimmering_ behind him, a preternatural wind stirring her hair as she clings even tighter to Asra, peering over his shoulder at a man she does not know.

_"Sister?"_ Arion asks, stung, _betrayed,_ because she has never laid a hand on her brother before, and now she's looking at him like he's a wild thing poised to kill.

_"Don't—"_ she rasps out, trembling, though the threat is clear, still, _"don't hurt him."_

They have an audience, now—standing in a ring with the three of them at the center, and Asra's head is spinning and he's _this close_ to being sick. He can't imagine Rei is faring any better, not when she's almost swaying on her feet.

_Not good._

Asra shifts, bringing her under the curve of his arm. "We're going," he tells her, scanning the rooftops until—

_There._

Asra brings his free hand to his lips, unleashing a shrill whistle, and then he leads Rei away from the scene as an osprey swoops down from the sky with a sharp trilling cry.

"Asra, wait— _hey!"_ Arion calls after them, but he's distracted by the flurry of furious feathers trying to stop him from following. _"Tulin?"_

Asra looks over his shoulder just once, catching Arion's bewildered look at seeing Rei's familiar, before he casts a nevermind-me spell that allows them to finally slip away from the marketplace unseen.

They're almost back on their street when Faust says, urgent, _Sick!_

He stops walking just in time to catch Rei as she stumbles in a spell of dizziness, eyes clenched tightly shut. Ice forms cold and jagged in the chambers of his heart, flooding his veins, chasing away what little warmth lingered from the touch of her magic and the still-too-bright sun.

_"Rei,"_ he says, grasping her shoulders. "Rei, what's wrong?"

She's shaking, clutching at her head, and Asra thinks, _Oh no._

"Is it a headache? Can you stand?"

_"Hurts,"_ she whimpers. He peers into her eyes and finds an increasingly _(damnably)_ familiar glazed quality to them. _Look at me, look at me,_ he begs her in his mind, but her eyes remain unfocused as she drifts in and out of lucidity.

_(Please, not again.)_

"Hold on," he tells her, hooking an arm around her shoulders and another behind her knees, hefting her up. Faust slithers out from her shirt and into his collar, coiling around his torso in what he thinks is meant to be a comforting squeeze, but he can't focus on much else besides the way Rei whimpers against his throat. _"Breathe,_ Rei. Like I taught you. Focus on something in the present."

Worried and desperately trying to stay in control, he reaches out with his magic in an attempt to ease the pain, only to find hers absent. Her magic is completely drained—she feels hollow, like a dried-up well, or a pitcher emptied of water. She must've used it all up in that display at the market, small though it was, and that thought drains _him,_ too.

_She could summon storms, once,_ he thinks, as he tucks her head beneath his chin and rushes back to the shop. _She could make it rain fire._

_(What else have they lost since he walked out that door?_ And a more frightening question: _what else do they have to lose?)_

The shop door swings itself open, the gas lamps flicker to life one by one when he passes them, his agitated magic waking up the house as he hurries up the stairs to the living quarters and lays her gently down on the bed.

"Rei?" he says, brushing her hair away from her face. "Can you hear me?"

She's still shaking, her skin gone to ice under his fingertips. _"Hurts,"_ she says again, and she struggles to open her eyes, pinning him with a pitiful look that makes his half-heart twist in his chest. "Asra, help. _Please."_

(He goes just a little bit more numb inside, each time.)

"Okay," he breathes out. "Okay. Just sleep, alright? _Rest."_ He presses a hand to her forehead, magic seeping through his skin and into hers, and soon enough her eyes flutter closed as her breathing evens out into something untroubled and peaceful.

That makes seven, now.

He sits slumped on the edge of the bed after it's done, staring at his hands, and he does not know if he loves or hates them for what they do. He is getting better at taking her memories away, and he doesn't want to be.

"Faust?" he calls, tired, and she slithers out of his sleeve, twining around his arm.

_Here._

"Watch over her for me, would you?" he says, pinching the bridge of his nose as he takes a slow, deep breath. "I think we're about to have company."

He pulls a blanket over Rei's sleeping form, and Faust makes herself comfortable in a loose coil atop her chest.

Down below, a knock sounds on the door.

Arion is there, standing on the stoop, with Tulin perched tamely—or as tamely as he can, for someone who isn't Rei—on his shoulder. The bird gives Asra a reproachful look, and then caws once.

"She's alright. She's sleeping upstairs," Asra assures him.

A whistling trill, questioning.

"I told you, you can't see her yet. What if you trigger her memories again? Neither of us wants that."

Tulin squawks, insistent, and Asra sighs. He, of all people, knows what it's like to desperately miss someone you see every day.

"You can see her through the window," he gives in, resigned. "But be quiet, or you might wake her."

Tulin takes flight with a soft cry, swooping up to the second floor window overlooking the bed. Arion watches him go with a quiet, pensive hum.

"Never seen him behave for someone who isn't my sister," he says. "How'd you get him to like you?"

"Actually," Asra says, "I'm pretty sure he hates me now more than ever."

_(That makes two of us.)_

He shakes his head. "Well, come in."

He leads Arion into the backroom. He doesn't sit, so Asra remains standing too, and he shifts uneasily on his feet. He can't remember the last time they had anyone over, and he feels a bit wrong-footed, and uncertain of protocol, even without taking into account that he is staring down _Rei's brother._

"Would you like some tea?" Asra says, and it sounds like a weak facsimile of courtesy, even to his own ears.

"I think we can skip the pleasantries." Arion crosses his arms. "What's this about triggering her memories, Asra? Why didn't she recognize me at the market?"

Asra sighs, and finally sinks down on one of the stools by the reading table, his strength leaving him in a rush.

"You'll want to sit down for this," he warns, and waits until Arion does.

And then he confesses.

He does not do it for absolution. He wouldn't even grant it to himself. His crimes are too great to forgive.

But Arion deserves to know, so it spills out of Asra like all that sand he'd thought had been already purged from his system, scattering his sins like dark and dirty grit across the cheerful star-speckled table cloth. The argument. The Lazaret. The lengths he'd gone to, fixing his mistake with more mistakes. All the things he's done, all the things he's regretted, all the things he'd do again in a heartbeat if it meant she could be _here_ —they are all of them left sitting there in the harsh sunlight that streaks across the table, laid bare for her brother's scrutiny and judgement.

Arion is quiet for a long time.

"Well," he says at last, wry, after he finishes processing the details of how, exactly, Asra had killed his sister. "That certainly explains why she stopped writing."

"Yeah," Asra nods, then pauses. "Or . . . not, actually. You mailed your letters here to the shop?"

"Yep. Same as we always have."

"We never got any."

"Maybe you just didn't notice?"

"We hardly get letters as it is. I'd have noticed." He shakes his head. "A problem for another time. First things first: I think it'd be best if she doesn't see you."

Arion sighs. "Because I could trigger her memories?"

"You did, earlier," Asra admits. "In the market."

"And you—made her forget?"

Asra nods.

Arion swears under his breath. "That bad, huh?"

"That bad. I'm sorry, Arion, I really am. I want nothing more than for her to remember you—or me, or—I'll take _anything,_ really, but—"

"But not if it hurts her." Arion sighs again. "I get it."

Asra thinks he should feel a little relieved to find something even vaguely resembling sympathy, but the numbness from earlier still holds him too firmly in its grip. He runs a tired hand down his face. "I don't know what else to do. I've tried everything I could think of—"

"But there's got to be something you _haven't_ thought of," Arion says, twiddling his thumbs restlessly atop the table. "It's a big world out there. Maybe—maybe somewhere there's something that could help."

"I've _thought_ of that," Asra says. "But I can't just leave her alone."

_(Not after what happened last time.)_

Arion frowns, the corners of his mouth pulling down unevenly, and Asra is struck again by that feeling of strangeness that comes from realizing how similar the siblings are. The expression is unsettlingly familiar on an unfamiliar face.

"Asra," Arion begins, "maybe—" He falters, takes a breath, then looks him right in the eye. "—maybe it'll be best if I take my sister home. Gramma might know something that could help, and Mama could take care of her. Worse comes to worst, at least she'll be with her family, where she belongs."

_Where she belongs,_ is what Arion says. _Away from you,_ is what Asra hears.

(You've done _enough_ to her.)

Accusation rings in his ears, made deafening by the fact that Arion is _right,_ isn't he? By what claim does Asra have the right to keep her? It's his fault she died in the first place.

Asra's breath catches, though he tries to keep his expression impassive. His fingers tremble against the cloth of the reading table. Arion's gaze roves over his face until he smiles, rueful.

"But of course you don't want to let her go."

Guilt. _Guilt._ He has stolen her from death, from what could have been an easy, uncomplicated life, and now he dares think to steal her from her family, who loved her better and gentler than he ever could.

_(Once a thief, always a thief, eh, Asra?)_

"I—"

Arion cuts him off with a sad chuckle, before he rises and wanders aimlessly around the tiny backroom.

"You know, we had an inkling," he says, sweeping aside the heavy curtain that bisects the room, "of what happened."

Asra starts. "You mean you _knew?"_

"Yes? No. No, not really. That's why I'm here, aren't I? Because we _didn't_ know, not for sure." He runs a finger through the dust gathered atop a carved mangrove-wood box, and breathes an almost imperceptible sigh. "But, about a year ago, maybe a month—a month and a half?—after Sister last wrote, Gramma—well. She said she'd dreamed of her, that she saw her in the realm between, already heading for the other side." He shrugs, but the line of his shoulders remains too tight to pull off _casual._ "There's really only one thing that could mean, right? Papa—didn't take it well. And Mama—she refused to believe it. She still doesn't. I don't think she'll ever stop waiting for Sister to come home."

"And you?" Asra asks.

Arion shakes his head. "I didn't know _what_ to think. I didn't _want_ to believe it. She's my _sister,_ you know? But—" He tugs fitfully at his hair, then musses it harshly in frustration. "But if Gramma really did see her—if that really was her saying goodbye, then—" He sighs. "I don't know. I _still_ don't know what to think." He frowns again, that same lopsided pout he shares with Rei. "Now more than ever."

It had not quite occurred to Asra, before, just how many people his sins have hurt; how many people have the right to curse him, to hate him for his crimes.

_(They can wait their turn,_ he thinks bitterly. _He himself will always be first in line to tie the noose.)_

Arion idly inspects the various trinkets Asra keeps hidden, before he tugs the sheet off the old guitar with its three broken strings, resting upright against a shelf. He plucks one of the remaining steel cords, the single discordant note echoing in the afternoon air.

"You should get this fixed," he says quietly. "Music always did calm her down. Maybe it'll help, when she gets headaches."

Asra blinks, startled and fiercely, guiltily _hopeful._ "You're not taking her home?"

(He has no right to keep her, but all the same, he will never be able to help wanting to. _Gods,_ does he want to.)

"I think she already is, no?" Arion smiles. "I was wrong, before. She should stay with you. You'd know what to do better than we would."

(He really, _really_ doesn't.)

"I'll ask Gramma if she knows anything that could help, and I'll keep an eye out when I'm traveling," he continues. "I'll write you."

"Let's hope it gets to me."

"Right."

Arion crosses the room to duck through the curtains leading into the shop proper, and Asra rises, following suit to show him out.

"Asra," Arion says, solemn. He sounds as old as Asra feels, standing there in the doorway, backlit by harsh daylight as he tugs up his hood. "I don't blame you. For what happened. And I don't think you should, either."

Asra blinks. (It isn't forgiveness, not really, but whatever it is, he probably doesn't deserve it, either.) "What?"

"It's obvious you blame yourself," Arion says. "For a while there, I did, too. But—it's not really _anyone's_ fault, is it?"

"I left her," Asra reminds him. It still hurts to say.

"That _was_ stupid of you," Arion says bluntly. He never did have his sister's sense for delicacy. "But _staying_ was pretty stupid of her, too, and she would've died with or without your help."

_"Never,"_ Asra spits out, so fast and so harsh that he surprises himself. "I would _never_ have let that happen if I was here."

Arion only smiles, sad, fiddling with the tattered edge of his cloak.

"She'd been having nightmares about fire, you know," Arion tells him quietly. "Ever since we were young. In hindsight, I think she knew, somehow. It was always going to happen."

Asra doesn't say anything, staring down at his boots.

He hears Arion take a shaky breath. "But you—Asra, you _brought her back."_ Asra's gaze snaps up, and he's surprised to find tears gathering at the corner of Arion's sharp eyes. He forgets how _young_ Rei's brother is. (Or how young they _all_ are—the three of them aged beyond their years by burdens they shouldn't have to bear.) "She's here. We didn't lose her after all. That's—" He bites his lip against a shudder, grasping for composure. "Thank you, Asra. _Thank you."_

He bows from the waist, hood falling to cover his eyes, before he turns away and slips out into the street, and Asra watches him go in the kind of silence more fittingly found in a tomb.

 

\---

 

After Arion leaves, Asra quietly makes his way to the balcony garden, closing the door gently behind him before letting out a shrill whistle. Tulin arrives with a soft caw, settling himself on the railing with an imperious fluffing of feathers and an annoyed glance at Asra.

Asra isn't fazed, crossing his arms and meeting the osprey's look with a glare of his own.

"Tulin, Rei's brother has apparently been sending her letters that never arrived. You wouldn't happen to know anything about that, would you?"

A sense of impatient exasperation flickers in Asra's mind.

_"Tulin."_

If birds could roll their eyes, Tulin certainly would right now. With a huff, he flies over to the little bird box they'd installed for him atop the pergola years ago, now completely hidden by the wisteria unless one knows where to look. He re-emerges with several crumpled, dirty letters, dropping them right on Asra's head before settling on the railing once more with a put-upon expression.

"Why have you been hiding them?" Asra demands.

An irritated, incredulous look. It should be obvious.

"Alright, I agree she probably shouldn't see these, but you could have given them to _me."_

Tulin looks away, beak raised haughtily in the air. Asra sighs.

(They are each of them only doing what they can to ensure she's not hurt more than she already has been.)

"You know," he says after a while, contemplating a smudge of dirt on one of the envelopes, "she might never remember us."

Tulin's head whips around to glare, his sharp talons clenching and unclenching on the wood of the railing.

"It's true. I've tried a lot of things and none of them worked. It might be permanent."

Tulin's indignant caw is easy enough to interpret. _Try harder._

"Of _course_ I will." He sighs again. "But I don't think she'd blame you, you know. If you left. You don't have to stay."

Tulin gives an affronted squawk, offended by the very idea. He shakes himself, feathers ruffling to make himself look bigger, and lets out a series of angry trills that sound more berating than anything. He flaps his wings as he does, as if to emphasize his point. Of _course_ he'll stay. He's _hers._

"Yeah," Asra agrees, mournful. "Me too."

 

\---

 

Rei sleeps through the rest of the day and all through the night afterwards. It worries him a little, but he checks her breath and her pulse, and finds them slow and even, but strong. She will wake, in the morning.

(She _has_ to. He doesn't know what he'll do if she doesn't.)

Asra thinks on what Arion said as he slips under the covers next to her. The world is a wide, weirdly wondrous place; surely, _surely,_ there is a solution somewhere. The Prakran Royal University's library has the biggest known collection of magical writings; perhaps he might find something, there. Or he could go to the lush jungles of the Whispering Wilds, on the other side of the desert, where the very earth thrums with magic, and where an ancient coven of witches dwell, listening for the arcane secrets sung by the trees. Or he could go to the volcanic islands of Ignescent, in the Southern Seas, where they say a dragon sleeps in the caldera of the largest volcano, as old as time itself and twice as wise.

He could go traveling, to find what answers he must. For her sake.

(He'll have to get over leaving first, though.)

The memory of his first sin returns full force as he lays there in the dark—the flicker of the gas lamps; the _books-herbs-incense_ smell of the shop, of _home;_ the electrical charge in the air, their magic clashing as much as their wills.

The hurt in her eyes, and in his heart. The last _I love you_ left unsaid.

The words they _did_ say, still bitter as rue on the tongue even after all this time.

_(If you want to leave, Asra, then leave!)_

_(Fine! If you want to throw your life away for a worthless cause, then go ahead! See if I care!)_

Perhaps _this_ is his curse—as punishment for running away when she needed him most, now his penitence is to leave her, no matter how it hurts him; no matter how he wishes to stay.

He rolls over to face her, memorizing the way moonlight draws the soft shadows of her lashes on her cheek. He lays there, loving her quietly as he always does (the only way he's allowed to love her, now), and counts her steady, even breaths until he, too, falls asleep.

 

\---

 

He dreams of an old memory, from the summer before she came to live in Vesuvia.

He had set up his booth closer to the Palace, that Masquerade, in the hope of getting more customers. He fears, at first, that she might not be able to find him this year, but as the night wears on and the revelry reaches full swing he finally spots her in the crowd, still wearing the first mask she'd bought from him—the blue one, with the painted silver stars.

_Closer,_ he urges her in his mind. _Just a little closer—_

He peeks out from behind the smallest gap through the booth's curtains until she passes just in front of him, before he jumps out to surprise her with a loud _"Boo!"_

She laughs. Lantern light catches in the sequins of hammered silver that make up the constellations on her indigo skirt, scattering shimmering starlight across her face, illuminating the happiness that makes her lips curl.

"Hello, Asra," she says.

(He's always loved the way she says his name—soft and lilting, like she's constantly on just this side of breathless.)

"How did you know it was me?" he asks, trying for a pout, but a grin breaks through anyway.

She smiles, stepping closer. The cowrie shells braided into her hair make delicate little clinking sounds when she moves. "It's hard _not_ to," she says. "Even with the mask. Hello, Faust."

Faust pops out of his scarf with a friendly hiss, and he pulls up his mask to rest atop his head, grinning when Rei does the same.

(He sees her face so rarely as it is. He'd rather not have to do so behind a disguise.)

"You remember her," he says, a little awed, a whole lot thrilled, letting Faust slither down his arm so she can flick her tongue on Rei's cheek in a snakey kiss.

"Of course," she says, giving Faust a scritch on the chin. "I would never forget her." Her eyes slide up to meet his, narrowed in smiling half-moons. "Or you."

(It's a cold comfort, to know that he's not the only one who breaks his promises.)

 

\---

 

She is groggy the next morning when she wakes, but coherent, which is all he ever asks for, really.

"I've been thinking," he says, over breakfast, "and maybe I should start teaching you to control your magic, so what happened at the market yesterday doesn't happen again."

She pushes her spoon around her oatmeal, biting her lip. "What _did_ happen at the market yesterday?"

"Nothing much," he says carefully. "You were—taken by surprise, and activated your magic by accident, and used it all up. And then you passed out."

"I didn't hurt anyone, did I?"

He thinks of the betrayal on her brother's face, and lies through his teeth. "No."

"Okay," she says. "Will I be your apprentice, then?"

He blinks, blindsided. "What?"

"If you're teaching me magic," she repeats, "does that mean I'll be your apprentice?"

Vehemently, _"No!"_

Her head tips innocently to the side. "Why not?"

"You're not— _I'm_ not—" He struggles to gather just enough composure to find the right words. He's not certain there even _are_ any right words for this. "It's not like that, Rei. I'm just going to teach you to control your magic again."

_"Again?"_

"I mean—" (Words. _Words._ He needs to be careful or he'll lose her to the stupid things he says, again.) "—it's beneath you to call yourself my apprentice. I'm no better than you are."

(And in some ways— _in a lot of ways_ —she is much, much better than he ever was, or ever will be.)

"But you can do all these—" She makes vague gestures with her hands, then deflates. "—amazing things with magic, and _I_ pass out after _one_ attempt that I can't even remember."

It's like two sides of a coin—all truth when she says it; souring into lies when it reaches his ears and he just sits there without correcting her, at a loss where to even begin.

(There are some falsehoods he is not allowed to right, lest he lose her, empty-eyed, to the truth. This is what he bargained for. These are the cards he has been dealt.)

He sighs. "If it's easier for you, then," he says slowly, "you can consider yourself my apprentice."

She nods, determined. "Understood, Master."

He winces. "You _really_ don't have to call me that."

"Why not?"

Why not indeed. It's only logical, in theory.

And unfathomably cruel, in practice.

(Who would have thought that _now,_ of all times, he would be so torn between head and heart, even with only half of the latter left?)

He's always loved the way she says his name, just on this side of breathless. Would he give that up, would he hide behind the cold, distant syllables of _Master,_ to bring her back to herself? To atone?

His answer, of course, is and has always been _yes._ What _wouldn't_ he give up? What _hasn't_ he?

(This, too, is his punishment.)

"Do as you like, then," he says, defeated, and rises to wash his bowl in the sink. "Finish your breakfast, then meet me in the backroom. We'll start your lessons there."

And then he flees, out of the room and down the stairs, before she can see the rictus of pain and misery he can't keep off his face.


	9. Where the Truth Can't Change Anything

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If y'all thought there was only one (1) self-sabotaging fool in this fic, I am here to prove you wrong.
> 
>  _Still_ set around two-ish years before the game starts; a conclusion of sorts to the dream fiasco of chapters 1/3/7. Rei is forced to face some realizations that may or may not change her relationship with Asra.

She walks the familiar path to the market despite her throbbing headache. She hadn't gotten much sleep last night.

She had dreamed: of Asra poised above her, a huge grin illuminating his face even as he'd said, _Stop laughing!_

She had not, giggles bubbling uncontrollably out of her lungs, and he'd said,  _Fine! If you won't stop—_

And he'd tickled her mercilessly, making her squeal as she tried to roll away, only for him to haul her back into his embrace. She'd kicked uselessly into the air and shrieked, and they had laughed, and laughed, and laughed—

—before he'd draped himself over her back, covering her body with his own, and kissed her neck, his hands wandering light and teasing in a different way altogether until neither of them had been laughing anymore.

(She is tired tired _tired_ of these dreams. Whatever happened to regular old nightmares?)

She shakes her head and pinches the bridge of her nose, chasing the memory away with a frustrated sigh.

"Morning, Rei!" the baker calls out as she ducks into his stall. She's grateful to get out of the midmorning heat, as well as the flow of market traffic; she is always a little more unsettled in crowds when Asra isn't here.

(When Asra isnt here, she is always a little more unsettled, _period.)_

It's been almost a month since he'd left; he should be home any day now.

 _(Hopefully,_ anyway.)

"Good morning," she greets, offering up a small smile.

The baker sees right through her. "Asra's still not back, huh?"

Her smile drops immediately, and she sighs. "No."

He offers a kind pat on her arm as he sets down a cup of his signature minty brew in front of her. Flour sticks to her skin where he'd touched her, but she doesn't mind.

"You really miss him, don't you?" he says, sympathetic. "I know what _that's_ like."

"I do _not—"_ _miss him,_ she's about to say, but that's an outright lie, isn't it? "He's free to come and go as he pleases," she says instead. "I'm not his keeper."

The baker gives her a look of baffled disbelief, one incredulous brow raised. His powder-dusted arms cross over his broad chest.  
  
"Doesn't mean you can't miss him anyway," he says.

She _hmphs,_ looking away, and sips her drink. Blood pools in her cheeks, and the baker laughs.

"Ah, young love," he says, shaking his head, rounding the counter to check on the loaves in the oven, and she almost chokes on her tea.

_"What?"_

The baker looks over his shoulder at her as takes out a few brown loaves from the oven, setting them on a rack to cool and clapping his mitted hands together, sending motes of flour whirling in the yellow sunlight streaming through a hole in the roof.

"Oh, don't think you're being all sneaky about it," he says, matter-of-fact. "What with the way you get all sad when he's gone, like a little kitten left out in the rain—"

_"Excuse me!?"_

"—and the way he makes eyes at you all the time like a lovesick fool. I don't see why you two bother to hide it. Life is short, I always say."

"He does _not_ 'make eyes at me', at any time whatsoever!" she protests. Her voice _squeaks,_ and she hates it.

He laughs. "Not when you can _see,_ of course. But to any observer with half a wit, it's quite obvious Asra's in love with you."

Her head is spinning. She came here to get some bread, not be clobbered over the head with all these embarrassing observations she only now realizes she's been very dutifully trying to ignore.

 _"And,"_ the baker continues, "I think _you're_ in love with him, too."

She hears the words and the world slows to a crawl, like watching an accident too late to prevent. She imagines her heart growing in her chest like an overinflated balloon until it bursts at the seams.

"I am _not—!" in love with him,_ she wants to say, but she can taste the lie even before it leaves her throat.

The baker only laughs, wrapping up her bread for the road.

 

\---

 

She thinks about it to the point of distraction the whole way home.

She knows Asra _loves_ her, which is a very broad term that doesn't always include what the baker had been insinuating.

He _cares_  for her, at least—though _care_ seems woefully inadequate to encompass all that he's done for her. Because she _knows_ —it is not just _care_ that makes him smile when she succeeds in mastering her restless magic; it is not just _care_ that had compelled him to stay, those first few hazy months she cannot quite recall, of which all she remembers now are impressions of warmth and safety and the feel of steady hands reaching for her when the headaches became too much.

There is _duty_ somewhere there too, surely—and _obligation,_ because he is her master and she is his apprentice, and he is responsible for her learning and to some extent her well-being. But—

It is not _obligation,_ certainly, that makes him laugh when she surprises him with pumpkin bread. It _might_ be obligation that guides his feet home, again and again, but it is certainly something else that pushes him to bring her back little trinkets, each and every time. The comb. The bits of patterned cloth. The clay animals they keep on the window sill—the snake and the fox and the osprey and the kingfisher, which is her favorite, with its bright indigo-painted wings. And the salamander, whom he'd gotten for her after he'd come home from a journey only to find scorch marks on the walls around the stove, the consequences of a spell gone awry. He'd left again that night, headed for some market whose name he'd mumbled too low to hear, and came back at dawn with the chirping little reptile that now resided in their stove.

Alright, so perhaps that last one had been more self-preservation than anything—no one wants to come home to a pile of ash and rubble, after all—but _self-preservation_ doesn't account for the patient kindness in his eyes as he'd magicked the scorch marks away.

So. Asra loves her. There is really no other word for it.

_Asra loves her._

It is a little strange to think so in such plain, concrete words, even in her own mind, though she _knows_ —it's true. She feels it, a bone-deep certainty that pulses with every beat of her heart.

But Asra, _in love_ with her? The same Asra who sleeps as far as he could from her on their tiny bed? The Asra who flits in and out the door on his mercurial whims? The Asra who never tells her where he's going or why he's leaving or how long he'll be gone?

The Asra who, when she'd asked if he'd ever been in love, had gotten a faraway look in his eyes and a strange catch in his voice as he'd replied, _Just the once?_

 _That_ Asra, in love with her? Impossible. Laughably so.

(Whether or not she wishes it were so—that is another matter entirely.)

She looks up at the sky. There aren't any stars visible during the day, of course, but she can hear them always, at the back of her mind, like some kind of magical tinnitus.

They're tittering, now. Soft, but almost playful. She frowns up at the sky.

"You could stand to be a little less _cryptic,"_ she grumbles. "Or at least tell me something _useful,_ like when he's coming home."

The tittering just turns to giggling, following her mockingly all the way back to the shop.

 

\---

 

She grinds the herbs with her pestle harder than is strictly necessary, later that afternoon. The shelves won't restock themselves, and the familiar scraping of stone against stone as she works is soothing, though not as much as she'd hoped.

She's deliberately avoiding thinking about the rest of the baker's words, and she knows it—because _It's quite obvious Asra's in love with you_ isn't the only thing he'd said.

_And I think you're in love with him, too._

She grits her teeth, and her pestle grates against the bottom of the mortar with her use of excessive force. She pulls her hands away, gripping the edge of the table for balance, and hisses out a calming breath between her teeth. Her nails tap restlessly against the wood. The sunlight pooling in a golden rectangle on the surface of the table shifts to orange and then deep pink as she stands there, lost in thought.

The first one had been easy enough to untangle. Asra loves her, but he isn't _in_ love with her. Simple, straightforward fact.

As to whether or not _she's_ in love with Asra, based off a few _(recurring,_ to her eternal shame) wet dreams, and perhaps a handful of idle fantasies (no doubt also the product of said wet dreams) wherein she'd wondered what it would be like to kiss him—well. She'd _really_ rather not think about it.

Is there even a _point_ to thinking about it? He is still her master, she is still his apprentice; he still isn't in love with her, and in all likelihood is in love with someone else. (She remembers the way he'd said _Just the once,_ and the way she'd had to wrestle down the _Who?_ that immediately formed in her mouth.) Someone remarkable, certainly, to have caught Asra's eye. She wonders what kind of person they're like, for him to seemingly carry a torch for them all this time, despite to all appearances no longer being involved. At least, not if his continued presence in the shop— _with her_ —is any indication.

Oh, but _what if_ —what if _that's_  where he goes to, every time he leaves? To visit his lover?

What do they think about his living with her? Do they even _know_ about her? Is Asra keeping her a dirty little secret, like some kind of— _some kind of—_

She shakes her head, and slaps her hands against her cheeks twice, leaving chlorophyll stains from the crushed herbs on her skin.

No. Asra wouldn't do that. He's not that kind of person, and besides, he— _loves_ her. People don't do that to people they love.

And—he had looked so _sad,_ admitting to his old love, that perhaps it's safe to say they're no longer together. Or _unable_ to be together.

(Because there had been something like _grief,_ too, in his eyes. Clogging his throat, like a dam holding back his tears.)

And—an interesting thought: what if _that's_ why he stays with her, too? Out of obligation to his lost love? Perhaps they'd entrusted her and the shop to his care. Perhaps she'd been their relative?

Asra had told her she had an aunt who left her the shop. Maybe—maybe _that_ had been Asra's love, and then maybe her aunt had died to that horrid plague a year ago that she has absolutely no memory of, and maybe she had asked Asra to take care of her, and maybe that's why he stays, because she and the shop are all he has left of her, and— _and—_

—and she's _definitely_ overthinking this.

She is _overthinking_ this and she _shouldn't_ be because it doesn't _matter_ that she's in love with him, not when _he's_ not in love with _her._

She groans, and buries her face in her hands. Her fingers smell like basil and rosemary and lavender, grounding her with something solid to hold on to amidst the tempestuous chaos of her thoughts.

 _She's in love with him,_ she realizes, with a singular, stark clarity—that one sentence swimming to the forefront of her mind. As if from far away, she hears the stars laugh.

_She is in love with him. She is in love with Asra._

(The solid ground of comfortable, oblivious certainty crumbles beneath her, and she's falling, falling, with no one to catch her.)

 

\---

 

That night, she dreams of herself standing at the very end of the docks, her bare toes hanging over the edge of the last plank, staring at the dark ocean below. The moon is a full silver coin in the sky, casting shimmering glitter-lights on the water, and the ocean is the biggest wishing well she's ever seen.

 _(Not big enough,_ she thinks. _Not for the things she wishes for.)_

There is the sound of quick, booted footsteps hitting the wooden boards, someone running straight toward her.

 _Oh,_ she thinks. _Oh no._

She knows it is him without even looking. _(And the stars, oh, how the stars laugh.)_ She squeezes her eyes shut, bracing herself against the onslaught of images of them touching, kissing, holding each other like lovers do.

 _Please,_ she begs whoever might be listening—the stars, the spirits, the uncaring sea— _please, no more. I am in love with him and I can take no more of this._

His laugh carries over to her on the ocean breeze, the rapid rising-falling rhythm of his delighted _pfhahahahas_ mingling with the sound of the waves. She still can't find the strength to open her eyes.

So it takes her by surprise when she feels his arms wrap around her as he twists on his heel, sending them both off-balance and tumbling into the frigid water.

She yelps, and gulps down a mouthful of seawater when she doesn't close her mouth quickly enough. They go under, though not very deep, floating just beneath the surface. It is dark, and cold, but still she is so _aware_ of him that she can feel him smiling into her neck even as a flurry of bubbles skitter around them and over them, floating upwards in a white foam.

She coughs when they surface beneath the shadow of the dock, the briny taste of seawater strong on her tongue. Asra is laughing behind her, his arms still around her middle. He hasn't let go of her the entire time.

She turns in his hold and slaps him lightly on the shoulder with the flat of her palm. She pouts, cross, and slicks back her hair from her face.

 _"What was that for!?"_ she demands, but he only laughs again, hands moving to her waist. She doesn't even have to tread water to stay afloat, she realizes, held aloft by his magic that colors the little slice of sea around them a bright, beautiful blue.

Asra stops laughing, the mirth in his eyes softening to something gentler, something quieter, and then he leans forward and kisses her, the warmth of his mouth a shock against the cold of the water.

(She will never, _ever_ admit to the way the chant of _no more, no more_ in her mind immediately and irrevocably changes to simply _more, more_ the moment his lips touch hers.)

It's a very chaste kiss—just his lips moving against hers, slow and soft and sweet. It's—it's a very _Asra_ kiss, somehow, by turns tender and playful and above all _kind;_ he doesn't push against her, instead letting his mouth dance with hers in a sort of teasing waltz that reminds her of how the tide moves, the ebb and flow reflected in the the way he presses forward gently only to slip away a fraction, letting her breathe without breaking contact.

And yet she is still breathless when they pull apart. He might as well have just dunked her back into the ocean.

"What was _that_ for?" she asks again, hushed, uncertain. He's stolen all other words from her mouth, along with any courage she might have possessed or any desire to resist. She wonders, idly, if he can even hear her over the waves.

He is still looking at her softly, his lashes white in the moonlight reflecting off the water, and—and—

—and somehow this is _worse_ than the nightmares or the dreams of chasing him or even the dreams about sex, because _she is in love with him_ and this is all she'll ever have: just a phantom Asra in the moonlight, looking at her the way she wants him to look at her; looking at her like he's in love with her too.

She's dreaming; she _must_ be, because Asra smiles and says—

"I miss you, that's all." He unsticks a wayward lock of hair from her cheek and tucks it behind her ear. "I can't wait to see you again."

His smile is a killing blow.

She squeezes her eyes shut against the mortification and the dull, throbbing pain in her chest, wishing she could sink to the bottom of the ocean and stay there until coral grows over every inch of her, rendering her unrecognizable.

(He _loves_ her and she _knows_ this and she wishes it was _enough.)_

She feels him tug her forward, settling her against his chest as they drift in the water, carried by the waves and his magic toward the shore. She stumbles a bit when her feet find the sand beneath them, but Asra catches her so easily, guiding them out of the sea until they collapse in a tangled heap on dry land, his arms still warm and firm around her.

She looks up only to be greeted by his smile, then his laughter, ringing high and bright and free the moment he meets her eyes. He smooths a hand over her hair, sticky with saltwater and rough with sand.

"You look like something the cat dragged in," he teases, grinning, and laughs again when she cries out in indignant protest. "Here," he chuckles, eyes glowing lavender with his magic, and she feels the water being coaxed out from their clothes, gathering on the surface of the fabric in shivering puddles before dissipating into mist, leaving them completely dry.

She wants nothing more than to roll off him, onto the sand _(she wants nothing more than to crawl into his skin and make a home out of his heart)_ but his hold is still unrelenting around her, so she just leans forward, her head falling against his chest as she flops bonelessly atop him, cheeks burning despite the cool ocean air. She closes her eyes, letting her mind drift and drown in the peaceful sounds of her dream-scenery.

It feels like _home,_ somehow—the crashing of the waves, the feel of powdery sand beneath her, the whispering of stars in the great overturned bowl of the indigo sky.

 _The feel of Asra's fingers in her hair. The warmth of his skin against her cheek. The sound of his heartbeat._ It must just be her imagination, or else merely the strange working of dreams, but she thinks it marches to the exact same rhythm as hers.

Her hands tighten in his shirt.

"Asra?" she says, her conflicting emotions scrubbing at her throat as much as the lingering sea salt. She's _dreaming;_ she should not be as nervous as she is. It's not like he'll ever actually find out.

He hums, and she can hear the smile in it. It thrums through his chest, reverberating against her cheek.

"Asra," she says, voice dropping to a whisper, "I'm in love with you."

He goes still beneath her for a split second, before he laugh-sighs, and his fingers go back to combing her hair.

"It's so easy to hear what we want to hear when we're dreaming, huh?" he says, so softly that she has to strain her ears to listen. It almost sounds like he's talking to himself, but his words cut through to the heart of her, splitting her open so her shame is laid bare for all to see.

_(I'm in love with you and I shouldn't be. I'm in love with you and it's selfish. I'm in love with you and I want you to love me, too.)_

Overhead, the stars are laughing, still. It's mean of them, but she maybe she deserves it.

But when Asra next speaks, his voice is soft and kind, and just a little bit sad. It sounds so very _Asra_ it _hurts,_ especially because what he says is—

"Rei," he sighs. "I wish I could tell you—I've always been in love with you, too."

She closes her eyes.

With every ounce of strength she can muster, she wills herself awake, unable to take any more.

 

\---

 

She wraps her arms around herself as she lays alone on their little bed, the dream having shaken her far more than any of the others.

She does not know how her own mind can summon this cruelty, dangling her deepest desires in front of her only to yank it away with the sunrise. She shuts her eyes tight, but all she sees is the silver of his hair, the curve of his smile. Each beat of her heart still echoes _I'm in love with you, I'm in love with you,_ and she presses her hands over her chest, willing it to quiet, willing it to bury her secret somewhere he'll never find it.

_(She is alone in loving him and she will learn to make it be enough.)_

 

\---

 

The bath had helped, as did breakfast, but she still feels a little hollow as she moves around the shop, absently arranging and rearranging the merchandise on the shelves, singing softly to herself as she does.

 _"Dream me safe, dream me true,_  
_Dream me coming home to you—"_

(She has had _quite_ enough of dreams, _thank you.)_

 _"And I'll sail o'er the ocean blue,_  
_And I'll sail home, my lover, to you."_

(Huh. Where had she learned that song, anyway?)

The front door creaks; she barely has a moment to register the flash of white hair beneath the low-sitting brim of his hat—

—before she feels her lips stretch in a wide, automatic smile. She's betrayed by her own heart and she _hates_ it.

"You're back," she breathes, watching as he seems to stand up straighter, an invisible weight lifting from his shoulders the moment he steps over the threshold. "Welcome home, Master."

And then, before she even realizes she's moving, she's already halfway across the room and stumbling into his arms. _(He catches her so, so easily.)_ The force of her hug throws him off a little, his hat falling to the floor, but he steadies them, there in the open doorway, and laughs. The myriad smells of all the distant, secret places he's been to linger in the folds of his scarf.

"Someone's missed me," he says, and it is a blow to her pride, that her weakness is so apparent.

"It is difficult not to," she huffs, feeling like the worst actress in the world when it sounds like a whine, even to her ears, "what with the amount of trouble you bring with you. Oh, hello to you too, Faust."

Her master's familiar pops out of his scarf with a friendly flick of the tongue, and she lets Faust crawl onto her arm, though the relief of having a distraction is overshadowed by the feeling of loss when she steps out of his embrace. She squashes that emotion ruthlessly down.

"It seems a family of mice have taken up residence somewhere in the kitchen. It does annoy the salamander so," she tells Faust, very deliberately turning her back on Asra as she makes her way to the stairs. "Could you help with that, Faust?"

Faust hisses, friendly, then looks back at Asra.

He's still standing by the door, a blank sort of look in his eyes. His hat is still lying abandoned by his feet.

"Master?" she says, feeling unsettled by his haunted stare, and tries desperately to hide it. "I made stew for us, of course."

He blinks, then breathes like he's been pulled back to his body from somewhere far away. _(Somewhere she couldn't hope to follow.)_ And then he smiles, shifting seamlessly back to the Asra she knows _(Her Asra,_ her mind supplies, but she strangles that thought before it takes its first breath), and says, "I'll be right there."

She nods, and runs up the stairs like a coward before she can say another word.

(Because the words that ready themselves on her tongue are these: _Asra, I'm in love with you.)_

She clamps her lips tightly shut even as she moves out of his line of sight, because those are the words to the only secret that she will never, _ever_ let him find out.


	10. Where I Can Hold Your Hand Again

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Uncharacteristically fluffy chapter, sorry angst fans. Slight spoilers for Book XVII.
> 
> Set 1 1/2 years before the game begins. Asra gets a visitor, receives a gift, and learns that muscle memory isn't such a bad thing, after all.

Rei has been— _jumpy,_ perhaps, though that's still not quite the right word—since he'd returned from his journey at the tail end of summer.

She fidgets a lot, and is restless, and he keeps catching her glancing at him when she thinks he's not looking. Sometimes he'll catch her even when he's _not_ looking, because Faust will whisper to him: _Friend looking!_

He doesn't know what to make of that.

He wonders, sometimes, if maybe she really had been there, in his dream. And—the thought of it is a little _alarming,_ honestly, but: it's been known to happen, on occasion. His mom had even told him stories about it, once.

 _(I met Baba in my dreams,_ he remembers her saying, cradling his younger self in her arms as they sat in the creaky old rocking chair by the window.)

 _(And thank fuck for that,_ Baba had laughed. _I don't think Mama would have given me the time of day if she'd met me first in real life.)_

But—

Asra doesn't know how to do it deliberately, or if he even could. He doesn't think _she_ could, either, with how erratic her magic still is. And aside from that one throwaway line when she'd greeted him upon his return, she has given no indication whatsoever that she is aware of how he thinks of her whenever he's away, or how he thinks of her, period.

(Just as well.)

He rolls over in their bed, watching the rosy light of sunrise creep over her features, relaxed in sleep. She had moved in the night, as she often does; now she is on her side, facing him, closer to the center of the bed than she'd been when she'd fallen asleep, and less than an arm's length away. If he reaches out his hand, he could touch her. If he reaches out to touch her, he could lace his fingers with hers. If he laces his fingers with hers, she might squeeze his hand back, and he could pretend—for that brief, wonderful moment before she fully wakes—that she's his again.

 _(But_ —if he touches her, he could hurt her, and hasn't he done that enough?)

He sighs, and rolls out of bed instead. He pads toward the stairs, trying to be as quiet as possible so as not to wake her, but it's a futile effort, given the way Faust hisses in his mind from her hiding place somewhere in the rafters.

_Friend looking!_

His shoulders stiffen, but he doesn't turn back, heading down the stairs and out of her sight.

 

\---

 

He's helping her in the garden when Faust catches her again, whispering in his mind with a hiss that almost sounds like a giggle. He looks up from repotting some rosemary for the kitchen, only to see Rei turned to face him, her hands gone still when she should have been trimming back the rue, which has been growing aggressively as of late.

"Is something wrong?" he asks.

Her mouth opens, closes, and again, before she finally says, "Master, can I ask you something?"

That same unease that has dogged her for weeks is now front and center. He still doesn't know why. He tips his head, smiling as he teases her to lighten the mood. "You can certainly _try."_

She gnaws at her lip. "You said—I had an aunt, and she left me the shop."

That is—not really what he expected, but it puts him immediately on edge all the same. He has never—not _once_ —succeeded in restoring her memories; he is not even sure what triggers the catatonia, and isn't keen on repeating the experience anytime soon. It's been half a year now since he's last tried.

"So I did," he says carefully. "What about it?"

"Well—did you know her very well?" she asks, and then follows it up with more rapid-fire questions when he doesn't answer right away. "What was she like? Was she a magician, too? What happened to her? Why did she leave me the shop?"

He opens his mouth, but can't make anything come out. He sighs instead, then waves her closer as he settles back to sit cross-legged on the balcony floor. She mirrors him, and before he can talk himself out of it, he takes her hands in his own, squeezing them briefly, light and reassuring. She stiffens, infinitesimally, then relaxes, but she still squirms beneath his touch and his gaze. The nervousness she'd so recently developed is even more apparent, now.

"Rei."

 _"Yes!?"_ she says, a little too loud, and he can't help it—he chuckles softly under his breath, which only makes a flush creep onto her cheeks as she stubbornly looks down at their still-joined hands.

He begins carefully, "You know that—you get headaches when you try to remember your past?"

She blinks, finally meeting his eyes. "I—yes?"

"Well, if I tell you about your aunt," he says, rubbing circles into the soft flesh between her thumbs and forefingers, "and you start to get a headache, I need you to promise you'll tell me, okay? As soon as it starts."

The tension in her shoulders bleeds out, just a bit, and her fingers flex tentatively around his. "Okay. Promise."

"Okay," he sighs. "Well, what do you want to know?"

"Oh, um. For starters, what was she like?"

He hums absently as he ponders the question, turning her hands over to swipe his thumbs across her palms. It's a strange feeling. He has been actively avoiding touching her overly much, even though her own hesitant overtures of physical affection seem to indicate that it is not wholly unwelcome. He has sorely missed the simple happiness of letting himself feel her warmth, and to feel it now—to see her accept it so casually, like it's the easiest thing in the world—makes him feel a bit like his magic is going haywire beneath his skin.

"Miss Embri—" he begins, glancing up to peer into her eyes, watching for any discomfort, any pain, but her face only shows curiousity. "—well, I used to be her apprentice, sort of."

"Oh," she says. "Like us?"

_(No.)_

He fights back a grimace. "Not— _quite._ I'd help around the shop in exchange for lessons and a bit of allowance. She was strict, and a little short-tempered, but fair." He smiles a little as he starts to reminisce a bit more. Miss Embri hadn't wanted an apprentice, but surviving on the streets had made him nothing if not persistent, and eventually she'd relented.

Rei stares at him, a tiny line creasing between her brows, and says, "Was she pretty?"

He blinks at the unexpected turn. "Ah—yes, I suppose?" he says, tone flicking up involuntarily into a question mark. "She was still young." He pauses. "A little fierce-looking, if you liked that sort of thing."

"Oh."

And Rei sort of— _deflates,_ which shouldn't be so funny to him, but is.

_(You've always been the most beautiful thing in the world, to me.)_

He wishes that he wasn't too much of a coward to say those things awake. That her mind was not so fragile as to crack under the weight of all the things he wants to tell her.

_(You're beautiful, I love you, I miss you, I'm sorry, please, please, remember me, remember me, remember me—)_

None of those are things she's allowed to hear.

But he still can't help but tease her—

"I've seen prettier, though," he says, grinning.

Her expression darkens. "I bet you have," she says. "All those places you keep disappearing to." She won't look up from where she holds her fingers very carefully still in his own, her shoulders returned to their hunch, and he almost laughs out loud.

"I _meant,"_ he emphasizes, squeezing her hands, "somewhere closer to home."

And _oh,_ but the way she pauses, the wheels in her head turning, before her blush spreads all the way across her nose, is so beautifully familiar, so beautifully _her,_ that he can't bring himself to regret what he does next. He pulls her forward by her hands until she crashes into his chest, throwing his arms around her as he laughs and laughs and _laughs._

"Oh, _Rei,"_ he says, between pauses for breath, "you're _adorable."_

The mortified squeak that sounds against his neck only cements the fact.

 

\---

 

His first real impression of her, even before fully seeing her face, had been _touch._

He dreams of his little makeshift stall behind her aunt's shop, dreams of the stifling heat of the summer day that changed his life.

He's counting out the day's earnings, crouched by the back, when someone approaches his display, picking up a single mask. He stands up, gathers his deck in anticipation of a customer, and says, half turning, "Hi there! Can I help—?"

A tiny yelp as she's knocked into his booth, almost falling over if not for him reaching out to catch her. She stumbles and crashes into his arms, a blur of black and brown and indigo, and her skin is warm under his palms. His cards scatter at their feet; he glimpses a few familiar ones that land face up—fox, cat, snakes. He thinks they might be smiling wider than usual. Black hair tickles his nose; a heart flutters hummingbird-fast against his chest. The wood of the mask she's still holding digs into his collarbone. And when he looks down, and she looks up—

The noise, the crowd, the too-bright sun—everything fades away, until it's just brown eyes locked onto his, and a hand pressed over his thudding heartbeat.

(He will dream of that moment for years to come, waking always to the ghostly sensation of her hand, a phantom warmth on his hammering heart.)

 

\---

 

Touching her again might have, perhaps, been a mistake, in retrospect—because once he does he can't seem to _stop._

(But: he has made many mistakes in his short life, and he regrets only the few.)

His conscious decision to stop holding himself so aloof extends to even his sleep; more and more he finds himself waking up closer to the center of the bed, facing her—nearly touching but never quite. If he extends just his pinky, it would brush against hers.

He tries it once, and she sighs in her sleep, and mumbles, _"Asra."_

 _Asra,_ he'd dreamed her saying, once, _I'm in love with you._

(And oh, what if, _what if:_ she dreams of that too?)

But he pulls away abruptly, and doesn't try it again, because what if, what if, _what if—_

_(Blank eyes, silent tongues, limbs heavy and listless like the dead—)_

(He has done _enough_ to her.)

He hadn't realized, however, just how long muscle memory can linger in his hands, in his fingers—but there it is. It is with the ease of years of carefully cultivated habit that he finds himself brushing fingers over her arm when they're side by side in the kitchen, or laying a hand on the small of her back as they weave through the market crowds. He doesn't hold her hand anymore for necessity's sake, though he wishes he still could for his own delight.

(He holds himself back, still; _that_ is a learned habit, too. Some lines he refuses to cross, in the name of keeping her safe and _whole._ )

 _But_ —it still thrills him more than anything, that though there's often a moment of stiff surprise on her part, she never really pulls away.

It's a delicate game, finding the balance between too much contact and not enough. He feels sometimes like he's drifting on the waves of his own desires, surging forward, pulling back. He drives himself to madness, second- and third- and fourth-guessing, and he wonders how she stands it, stands _him_ —how she just _stands_ there in wait, accepting his uncertain overtures with little more than a nervous smile and pink cheeks.

(But he really shouldn't be surprised. She has always been steady; a welcoming shore. She has always been his safe harbor.)

 

\---

 

And she starts—slowly, hesitantly—to touch him more, too.

She is sitting on the bench under the pergola, arms around her knees, admiring the way autumn paints the leaves of the wisteria orange-gold.

He comes out with two steaming cups of lapsang souchong—hers in the blue polka dot mug and his in the chipped pink-purple paisley—and sits beside her. She only really has to reach out her hands to take her cup, but instead she slides her whole body closer until they're shoulder to shoulder, until she's brushing against him with every precious breath she takes.

If he closes his eyes, he hears only her heartbeat, and his, marching to the same even rhythm. He smells only tea and freshly-watered earth and the green-garden scent of her. He feels only her warmth, and can forget, for a moment, that it's not quite the same.

"I'm going to miss the summer," she says, conversationally. "But the fall is pretty."

_(Hey, Rei, what's your favorite season?)_

_(Summer, of course. When I met you.)_

He says nothing. He has not thought autumn pretty in a long time.

(It had been late autumn when he'd returned, when he'd dug in the cold, hard earth and found only gray ash and bitter regret.The skeletal branches of the bare trees had mocked him as he grieved.)

He still doesn't like it.

(The changing leaves remind him too much of fire.)

But: sitting here, with her, drinking his favorite tea in the garden they've grown together through the changing seasons, while she is touching him— _touching him!_ —well.

Perhaps he might learn to love the fall again after all.

 

\---

 

He's in the backroom, absentmindedly shuffling his deck, when he hears the bell above the shop door ring to announce a customer.

"Hello?" a familiar male voice calls. "Is Asra here?"

"He's in the back," he hears Rei reply. "Are you here for a reading?"

Asra pokes his head through the curtains separating the backroom and the shop proper, and just as he suspected, Arion is there, standing awkwardly across the counter from the sister who doesn't recognize him. Something is slung across his back, wrapped in cloth woven with the distinctive patterns of the Lisuga clan. Standing behind the display case, Rei is playing with a chubby little blue lizard, watching it scamper up her arm in fascination, while Arion watches her with a small, pressed smile.

"Come in," Asra says, drawing aside the curtains, waiting as Arion gives Rei a friendly nod before ducking into the backroom. "Rei, could you watch over—uh—"

"Tuko," Arion supplies.

"—Tuko, for a bit?"

She smiles. "'Course," she says. He hears her giggle, cooing to the gecko as the curtains fall back into place.

Asra sits at the table and gathers his deck. He sets up a muffling ward around the room; it won't completely silence their voices, but it will be quiet enough that Rei won't be able to make out their conversation.

"I'm not actually here for a reading," Arion says, wry, though he sits down anyway, the package slung across his back swaying with his movement.

"Yeah, I figured," Asra says. His hands continue restlessly shuffling the deck. "I got your letters. She's fine, as you can see."

"And still doesn't recognize me."

_(I'm sorry, I'm sorry, it's all my fault—)_

Asra shrugs despite the tightness in his chest, feeling his failure down to his very bones. "She's not going catatonic anymore, at least." (It's a pathetic cop out and he knows it.) "It used to be so easy to trigger it, but she's more stable now."

"Any luck?"

Asra shakes his head. "Sorry, I've—" _(been doing nothing; nothing but being selfish, nothing but pretending everything's the way it used to be—)_ "been looking for other ways to try. It's just hard to—"

"To see her hurt if you get it wrong?" Arion guesses. Asra forgets how clever he is, for someone so young.

But he still doesn't have any answers for that, so he just stares down at his _(useless, useless)_ hands on the table.

(What use are they, if he can touch her but not make her _remember?)_

Arion studies him, one brow quirked, then grins, toothy, one corner of his mouth higher than the other. He might not have his sister's tact, but the same compassion runs in their souls.

"You know, maybe you'd make better progress if you stopped beating yourself up?" he says, almost flippant. "Just a thought."

"I—"

Arion sighs. It either makes him seem very old, or makes Asra feel terribly young. Maybe both.

"I know you're trying your best, Asra," Arion says. "That's all we can ask." He pauses, humming as if considering something, then snickers. "I'm still gonna be an impatient ass about it, though."

 _(It would be well within your right,_ Asra thinks.)

"But—thank you," Arion says, surprising him. _Does he have his sister's uncanny empathy?_ Asra wonders. (Does he deserve it?) "Truly. From me, and everyone in the family."

Asra is startled into a snort, disbelieving. "Everyone, _really?"_

"Oh, yeah. I mean, Mama was ready to adopt you since Sister first wrote home about you, but after what you've done? I think it's all but official."

 _(After what you've done._ He wonders if Rei's mother really knows what that means.)

"—and Papa's really warmed up to you! Kinda weird, actually, considering how he used to, _y'know,_ hate your guts for dating my sister, but eh—"

Arion slings around the mysterious package, depositing it on the table. He unties the twine holding closed the colorful fabric to reveal a finely crafted guitar, its polished wood gleaming golden in the sunlight coming through the window.

"He got you this," Arion says, pushing it across the table. "As thank you."

 _"Oh,"_ Asra breathes. When he plucks a string, the note sounds clear and whole in the still air.

When it fades, Asra admits, "I haven't tried lately." He folds his hands together, and doesn't touch the guitar again. He hasn't done anything to earn it. "To make her remember. I haven't done anything, Arion."

Arion's brows lift. "No? She still looks a lot healthier than when I saw her last."

"It's been a _year,_ of _course—"_

"She came back from the _dead,_ Asra," he says. "She _still_ _looked halfway there,_ a year ago, and now she looks like none of that ever happened. You ever stop to think about how _you_ did that?"

"I _didn't—"_

 _"Oh, for—"_ Arion rolls his eyes. "Asra, she's _here._ She's _okay._ Do you seriously regret that?"

_"Of course not—!"_

"Then stop acting like it!" Arion snaps, crossing his arms. "You know that face she made when she saw Tuko? That's _exactly_ the face she always used to make with Tulin. So don't tell me she came back weird, or wrong, or _whatever,_ Asra, because I'm not gonna believe you."

"She's changed," Asra says.

 _"You've_ changed. _I've_ changed. I'll bet my fucking _boat_ people don't come back from dying _unchanged,_ if they even come back at all." Arion raises his chin, challenging. "She's still _her,_ Asra. Did you really need a second opinion?"

(Hey, Rei, what's your favorite season?)

_(I'm going to miss the summer.)_

(It's your favorite color, isn't it?)

_(My favorite color is purple.)_

(Oh, dream me safe, dream me true, dream me coming home to you—)

_(—and I'll sail o'er the ocean blue, and I'll sail home, my lover, to you.)_

Asra is stunned into silence, before quiet laughter begins to shake his body, and he says, "Still got a temper on you, huh?"

"Only with idiots." Arion grins, then rises from his seat. "Well, I won't take any more of your time. I did what I came to do. But _fuck's sake,_ stop trying to hang yourself, Asra. You're doing _fine."_

Asra gets up to show him out, but before Arion steps through the doorway and out of the muffling ward, Asra says, very quietly, _"Thank you."_

(He should've said it a year ago. But he knows he means it, now.)

Arion grins at him over his shoulder, and says only, "Mama made that blanket for you guys. You said Sister has a hard time staying warm, right?"

Asra follows him out to the shop proper, where Rei is dusting the shelves, Tuko perched contentedly on her arm. Arion reaches across the counter to wrap his hand around the gecko, but he doesn't budge.

Arion glares. "We're leaving."

Tuko glares back. He clings all the tighter to Rei's sleeve.

_"Tuko."_

Rei laughs, tickling the little lizard under the chin. "Well, you're welcome back anytime. Both of you."

Tuko's grip relaxes under her expert chin scritches, just enough for Arion to yank him off her arm and shove him unceremoniously into the folds of his hood. "Thanks, we'll be going now," he says, over the indignant chirping coming from beneath his cloak.

"Come back soon!" Rei says, and it's only then that Arion's mask slips, a little bit of the hurt beneath peeking through.

"Yeah," he says. "Stars watch over you both."

Arion pulls on his hood and slips out the door, leaving only that last, nostalgic goodbye and the cheerily ringing bell in his wake.

 

\---

 

It takes Asra a few days to work up the nerve to bring out the guitar, because what if, what if, _what if—_

_(Stop trying to hang yourself, Asra. You're doing fine.)_

On a sunny weekend afternoon, he finally takes the guitar from its hiding spot in the backroom and carries it up to the living space on the second floor. Rei is still in the kitchen, washing the lunch dishes. He settles on the bed, cradling the instrument in his lap, and begins to strum softly, tuning the strings. Muscle memory—much, much older than that which compels him to touch her—guides his fingers over the fretboard, the gleaming pegs, the steel strings, and soon he's plucking an old, old melody he'd thought he'd already long forgotten.

"I didn't know you played," Rei says quietly, and he looks up to see her leaning her hip against their rickety dining table, watching him, eyes alight with curiousity.

He grins. "What's a magician without a few secrets?"

She snorts, and rolls her eyes. _"Less trouble,_ that's for sure." She crosses the room to sit next to him on the bed, legs tucked under her. "Can I listen to you play?"

"I don't know a lot of songs."

She shrugs. "I'd like to listen anyway. What were you playing earlier?"

"Oh, that—"

 _(That_ is a different kind of memory altogether: his dad's fingers flying across the strings, his mom's dress swishing as she twirled—)

 _"Well,"_ he says, drawing out the word into multiple teasing syllables, "I _could_ sing it for you— _if_ you dance with me."

She quirks a brow at him. "I don't really dance."

 _(Yes, you do,_ something inside him thinks, a little desperately. _You always loved it.)_

 _(But_ , something calmer and quieter adds, _even if you don't anymore—you're still you. You're still you.)_

"Sure you can, Rei," he says encouragingly, his own excitement growing. "Don't be shy. _Everyone_ dances!"

"Not _well—!"_

"Just for fun," he pleads. "And besides, it's just me here."

 _Here too!_ a quiet voice sounds from somewhere in the ceiling.

"Well, and Faust," he amends, "and I think she wants you to dance, too—"

 _"Fine!"_ she laughs. "Only because I want to hear you sing."

He grins, and hops off the bed, strumming the first few chords—

_(Baba's throaty voice singing the words, Mama's slender hands clapping the beat—)_

—and begins to sing:

 _"The fox went out on a chilly night,_  
_he hoped the star would give him light—"_

He doesn't expect it when Rei's high, clear voice joins his as she rises from the bed. She's clapping out the beat.

 _"—for he'd many a mile to go that night_  
_before he reached the town-o, town-o, town-o—"_

"Do you know this song?" he asks, fingers not pausing on the strings. They're circling each other, skipping, twisting, twirling. Stumbling over pillows littered on the floor. _Smiling._ Binary stars in a whirl of music and color. Her indigo skirt swishes as she moves.

"I think I've heard it somewhere before!" she laughs, and they sing the next lines together.

 _"He'd many a mile to go that night_  
_before he reached the town-o!"_

He won't be able to say, later, if they finished the entire song. All he will remember is the way she looked, dancing in the afternoon sunlight, her joyful laughter a better and brighter kind of music than anything his hands could coax from the strings.


	11. Where Head and Heart Collide

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You guys get _another_ fluffy-ish chapter because Y'ALL GOT A BIG STORM COMING!! (◕ᴗ◕✿)
> 
> Still set around 1 1/2 years before the game, but after chapter 10. Rei navigates the clash between logic and love, and between past and present.

She dreams: of Asra standing on the beach, looking out over the slate-gray sea. A strip of crimson stains the far horizon.

 _Red sky at morning, sailors take warning,_ isn't that how that goes?

(Where has she heard that before?)

Rei watches, silent and unseen, as he slowly raises the blue pendant he never seems to take off, bringing it up to his mouth.

He kisses it, lips brushing against the sparkling stone, its color made even vibrant against the gray and the red and _the red._

 _"I'm almost there,"_ he says. _"Wait for me."_

 

\---

 

She fell asleep last night to silence, but this morning she wakes to the sound of splashing water, and that's how she knows, immediately, that Asra is home.

She rolls out of bed smiling. It's hard _not_ to, when Asra's here. She pads across the living space to the balcony door, a _Welcome home!_ ready on her tongue, until she steps through the open doorway and stops dead in her tracks.

Asra is standing there with his back to her, doing the laundry. It's not, in itself, a strange picture; Asra _likes_ doing the laundry, likes dumping the contents of their hamper into the big wooden tub they use for washing and making the clothes whirl with his magic. The churning water turns sudsy when he pours in the soap flakes, sending a thousand gleaming bubbles rising up, until the balcony air is full of them, floating serene and iridescent in the morning sun.

(She doesn't have a lot of memories to call her own, but _that_ is one of her favorites: Asra taking her hands to lead her in a fumbling dance, laughingly trying not to slip on the wet balcony floor as shimmering rainbow bubbles settle and pop in the fluff of his hair.)

But—

Asra is standing with his back to her, which she is _immensely_ grateful for, because she isn't sure she could handle seeing him facing her full-front, not when he's only in a loose white shirt that barely covers his _indecently_ short—

_pink_

_lace_

_briefs._

She chokes on a strangled sound, backing hastily away from the door, but the scream comes out anyway, short and shrill, when an unexpected cool smoothness brushes the back of her neck.

Faust drops onto her shoulders from the rafters, giving her a friendly squeeze. Several hurried steps sound from the balcony before Asra pokes his head in the doorway, brows scrunched in worry. His expression softens when he sees her, a wide, toothy smile curving his mouth.

"Rei, you're awake," he says, just a touch breathless with relief. "Oh, did Faust try to scare you?"

She can only see him shoulders-up, the rest of him still hidden behind the wall, but she can still see in her mind's eye the way the slope of his behind curved under the delicate stretch of those—

_pink_

_lace_

_briefs._

Faust sneaking up on her is the _least_ of her problems.

"I don't think she meant to," she says, voice too high-pitched for her liking. "I just didn't see her there."

_(I was too busy having a heart attack.)_

"Oh, okay," Asra says, and then smiles again, running wet fingers through his hair. His curls stay slicked back when he drops his hand, suds clinging to the white strands, and it reminds her of that memory again, when they'd danced under the floating soap bubbles. _That's_ a safe thought to think.

He'd been wearing pants, then.

Asra says something she doesn't catch, and he's looking at her curiously when she blinks back to the present.

"Sorry, what was that?"

"I said, did you want some tea?" he repeats, always infinitely patient. She wonders how he puts up with her, especially now that her bouts of absentminded daydreaming have only increased in the months since her fatally besotted realization. "I can brew some while the third load's still in the wash."

She pictures him puttering in the kitchen—bare legs gleaming golden in the morning sun streaming through the window, flashes of pink peeking beneath his shirt—and thinks it might give her an aneurysm.

 _"It's fine,"_ she says, voice cracking on the lie. "I can do it."

"Oh, well, alright," he says, and flashes her a charming grin that she doesn't know whether to love or hate him for. "Call me if you need anything."

The moment his face disappears from the doorway, she feels like she can finally breathe again. Faust flicks her tongue against her cheek, and Rei gives her a half-hearted scritch on the chin as she heads for the kitchen.

Faust slithers down her arm, plopping herself in a loose coil on the sill to take in the sun, and it calms her heart to see it. She begins to relax, feeling nothing but warmth and contentment as she sets the filled kettle atop the stove. After a softly mumbled _please_ to the salamander, he starts the fire for her with a cheerful chirp, the orange glow of the flame flickering through the grate. She crouches down to feed him some charcoal chips through the slats as she waits for the water to boil.

Outside, she can still hear Asra finishing the washing, the occasional sounds of splashing water drifting into the room as he wrings out their wet clothes. It's such a domestic scene—her making tea, Faust dozing by the window, Asra doing the laundry—and it makes her smile. Everything is so _normal_ it's _perfect._

And then she remembers Asra is still pretty much half-naked ( _bottom half,_ specifically), and she has to tuck her head against her knees to muffle the groan that rises in her throat. The salamander chirrups inquisitively, peering curiously at her from between the bars of the stove's grate.

It's been half a year since she's admitted to being in love with Asra, if only to herself. _Half a year._ She's probably been in love with him for longer, but the _knowing_ is a different kind of torture. Half a year of pretending nothing has changed, even when her insides collapse like a house of cards every time he smiles and every time he leaves.

And if she thought the _knowing_ had been bad enough, the _hoping_ is infinitely, _infinitely_ worse.

Because the way he's always leaving says one thing, but the way he's started touching her more often—a hand on her back, fingers in her hair, an arm slung carelessly around her waist in the early hours of the morning—says another, and she's not sure which she's supposed to believe: her stubborn head or her foolish heart.

 _You have no claim to him,_ she reminds herself, almost constantly. When she wakes up before him and he's shuffled just that little bit closer to the center of the bed. When he brushes against her in the kitchen, laughing at something or other as they prepare dinner. When he comes home and says, like he really, truly means it: _I missed you, Rei._

 _Stop that,_ she tells herself. _He's not yours, he's not yours, he's not yours—_

(Would he even _want_ to be?)

She sighs into the palms of her hands, and doesn't hear him come in, but she _does_ hear the empty laundry basket hit the floor as he gasps and says, _"Rei!"_

And then suddenly he's there, kneeling beside her on the floor, his familiar, calloused hands gently pulling hers away from her face.

_"What's wrong? Are you hurt? Is it a headache?"_

He tips her face to look at him, and he's _right there_ in those stupid, _wonderful—_

_pink_

_lace—_

_Rei, stop it!_ she thinks to herself, and tries _very_ desperately to keep her eyes on his face.

"It's not a headache," she quickly reassures him. "I—haven't had one of those in a while, actually."

"Well, that's a relief," he sighs, shoulders drooping with all his sincerity. "But are you alright? Are you ill? You look flushed—"

His hands move to cup her face, checking her temperature, moving her head this way and that.

 _(If she rocks forward on the balls of her feet,_ her heart whispers, _it'll take only the smallest fall from there to kiss him.)_

"I'm _fine,"_ she squeaks, squashing that thought ruthlessly down and grinding it under her heel. "I was just—" She glances around, eyes settling finally on the salamander, but he just sticks his tongue out at her and disappears further into the stove. _Traitor._ "—warming myself by the stove?"

It's a pathetic excuse at best, but Asra's expression softens all the same, that all-too-familiar melancholy settling in the corners of his mouth, and his eyes.

"It's been getting warmer recently, but is the house still too cold for you? I can add more heating charms around—"

"No, it's _fine,"_ she says hastily, instantly feeling terrible about worrying him. He has enough to worry about, surely.

He releases his hold on her face _(thankfully)_ but instead takes her hands between his own  _(an unnecessarily cruel turn of events)_ and brings them up to his mouth, exhaling gently on herfingers in an attempt to warm them.

"I was just making the most of the fire, that's all," she murmurs in meek protest, perhaps a little incoherently, but in her defense, the feeling of his breath on her fingertips is very, _very_ distracting.

A skeptical cheep sounds from within the stove, and she glares at the unseen salamander.

"Well, alright," Asra says, pulling her gently up by the hands. "But if you need anything, just ask."

"Right," she mumbles, and is saved from further embarrassment when the kettle whistles, and they settle into companionable silence as she prepares them two cups of his favorite tea. He smiles when he takes a sip of his, and she wonders when she had learned how to prepare it just the way he likes it, and whether or not that's as incriminating as she thinks it is.

"I meant to ask," she says too-casually, when she trusts her voice to be a little steadier, "why are you only wearing— _those?"_ She glances swiftly down at his briefs and back, trying to minimize the amount of time she spends looking, but even that short glimpse shows her the bulge behind the opaque front panel of his underwear, and she realizes that was a mistake.

"Oh!" he says, looking down, like he hadn't realized it, and then laughs, like he's not at all ashamed. He probably isn't, actually, come to think. "I ran out of clothes," he explains. "I could have done the laundry in nothing at all, but—" He smirks, that little lopsided teasing grin he only pulls out when he's trying to rile her up. "—I thought you'd prefer if I left something to the imagination."

 _(Stars above,_ he really _is_ going to give her a heart attack one of these days.)

"You know you could just borrow whatever of mine fits?" (Look at his _face,_  Rei; his face, his face, _his face—)_ "Where did you even _get_ those?"

"A friend bought them for me, once. It started as a joke, but I think I wear it pretty well?" He sticks a leg out, making his shirt ride up just that bit more.

 _(Don't encourage him,_  she thinks. _He doesn't need to know how good he looks in his pink lace—)_

Her face must be doing _something,_ though, because he laughs again. "Anyway, if you'd be so kind, dress me up, then, please?"

She grumbles as she sets down her mug and crosses the room, grabbing her favorite skirt from where it's folded neatly on the back of a chair. She hands it to him, and he steps into the tubular skirt, folding it over expertly around his waist before rolling down the top so it sits snugly around his hips.

Well, at least she isn't the only one who's learning the other's habits.

(It's not particularly comforting, though.)

He sways a little, watching the indigo fabric swish, the little silver sequins catching the light as he moves.

"Oh, it _is_ breezy," he says, delighted. "I see why you like it so much."

And if she thought seeing Asra flaunting lingerie was bad enough, her heart skips a different beat altogether to see him in her rumpled clothes, smiling like it's the best thing he's ever worn, like it's his, like he's _hers._

"Rei?" he says, looking at her curiously, and she must've missed something he said again, but she is all out of words.

"I'm—!" she squeaks, "I'm going to water the garden!"

And then she scurries out to the balcony like a coward _(—like a criminal caught red-handed, stealing something that isn't hers—)_ , all too aware of Asra's gaze pinned right on her as she goes.

 

\---

 

She dunks their tin watering can into the large clay jar they use to collect rainwater, filling it up as much as she can, and gets to working.

The spring wind is light, the garden quiet as she bustles around. Soon she settles into the usual calm, meditative routine of watering the plants, picking off dried leaves and weeds, adding a bit of fertilizer to the ones that seem to be growing a little behind the others, until finally the balcony air is pleasantly damp and misty, and smelling faintly of moss and petrichor. When she's done, she stands there, breathing in the scents of the incoming spring, and smiles a little bit, the watering can dangling limply from her hand.

Until the sound of Asra humming in the kitchen as he makes breakfast drifts out to her from the open door, and she remembers why she retreated to this sanctuary. She wonders, briefly, if she could climb into the clay rainwater jar and just stay there until all the embarrassment is flushed out of her.

She glances at it. _No, too small._

So she glares hard at the washing line instead, where a mix of her clothes and his—mostly his, because _she_ doesn't wait until she only has _lingerie_ to wear before doing the laundry—flap cheerily in the breeze. And then she squints at the sky to glare at the mild spring sun, because their clothes are _still_ dripping, and nowhere near dry, and in the kitchen, Asra is whistling as he makes breakfast in her skirt and those damnable, _blessed_ briefs—

She hisses out a breath, blood pooling in her cheeks, a high kettle-whine hissing through her teeth as she tries, with debatable success, to shake that image away.

Maybe she doesn't have any right to complain, not when she's still in just her sleeping shirt, too—

But: it comes down to mid-thigh, around a size or two too big for her, and she doesn't really have the curves to make it look indecent, and anyway _Asra_ isn't the one who's been kept up night after night by the frightening realization that he's in love with her, so, yes, she thinks she has a right to complain, considering the circumstances.

Maybe she should just—go out and meet new people. Heaven knows she has the time, with how often Asra is gone. Maybe if she just (—she grimaces just to think of it—) _went on a date,_ all these feelings (— _complications,_ is what they are—) would go away.

(But it's a pipe dream at best, she knows—because _I can be nobody else's but yours_ still rings loud and clear in her mind, echoed with every hopelessly smitten beat of her heart.)

"Rei?" Asra calls, and his voice washes over her like an icy bucketful. He might as well have just splashed her with the rainwater from the jar.

She turns to find him leaning out the doorway, smiling amiably. The hem of her skirt still swishes around his knees.

"Breakfast is ready," he says, flashing that grin again, and her hand tightens around the handle of the watering can, the cool metal grounding her until she no longer feels the need to march over to him and kiss the smile off his tempting mouth.

"I'll be right there," she says, managing, somehow, to keep her voice steady, which is perhaps the only thing that's gone right for her today.

"Okay," he says, disappearing back inside. Sighing, she gives the clothing line one last accusatory glare before following after him.

 

\---

 

"Right," she says, later that morning, grabbing a scarf from the hamper of unsorted clean clothes. She doesn't know whose it is, and frankly doesn't care.

(Asra is still wearing her skirt.)

She winds it around her neck and checks herself in the dresser mirror, smoothing down her pants.

"So," she says, "I have to do a house call with the butcher's wife down in the Flooded District—"

"Sunita?" Asra asks, wiping his hands dry on a towel after finishing up the breakfast dishes. "What happened? Is she alright?"

"Oh, no, she just twisted her ankle two days ago. I'm bringing her something for the pain."

"Ah. Well, tell her I said hello, then."

"Of course. So, I'm headed down there now, and then I'll swing by the market on the way home to pick up things for dinner. But Brennan is supposed to come by to pick up some more burn ointment—"

"What, the glassblower's apprentice in the Goldgrave?" he asks, skeptical. "How much burn ointment does he _need?"_

"He goes through a whole pot in three weeks, seems like, but it puts food on the table, so hush," she chides him.

She frowns at herself in the mirror as she wrestles with taming her hair. It's true that Brennan had been dropping by more often than was perhaps normal, and usually while Asra was away, but if it brings in business, she's certainly not going to complain.

The sound of shuffling cards draws her attention, and she looks over to see Asra smirking as he tucks his deck back in his pocket.

"Why, Rei," he says, with a smug upward curl of his mouth, crossing his arms as he leans his hip against the table, "if I didn't know better, I'd say he's in love with you."

She grimaces automatically. "I _hope_ not."

What would she do with that, even if he was?

(And her heart agrees: _I can be nobody else's but yours._ )

"Oh?" Asra says, with an interested quirk of his brow. "You're not flattered?"

"I have _enough_ to worry about with you constantly disappearing off to—" Asra's eyebrows are climbing ever higher, and she realizes, suddenly, how telling it must be that she follows up his statement with her thoughts of him, and starts immediately backtracking. _"In any case,_ if he swings by while I'm not around, his order is behind the counter, on the second shelf to the right, next to the powdered bat's milk."

Her turquoise comb keeps slipping off, and she grunts, frustrated, until Asra comes to stand behind her, gathering the locks of hair just above her ears and twisting them deftly together at the back of her head. He slides in her comb and steps away, smiling when it stays in place.

"Alright, you're good to go."

"Thank you," she mumbles, grabbing her bag to avoid looking at him in the mirror. She heads down to the shop proper with him at her heels, pausing by the door to put on her shawl.

"Remember, second shelf—"

"—to the right, next to the powdered bat's milk. I know." He brushes off some invisible lint from her shoulder and tweaks her nose, grinning. "Stay safe."

She feels her cheeks start to burn and she turns away, self-conscious, as the sound of his laughter chases her out the door.

 

\---

 

"Well, everything seems in order," Rei announces, securing the bandage around Sunita's foot after rubbing in the arnica salve. "What do you think?" she asks the toddler sitting on her lap, making him laugh and burble when she bounces him on her knees.

Sunita smiles as she leans forward and holds her hands out to her son, hefting him into her arms, the stud on her nose glinting as it catches the afternoon light.

"You have a knack for children, don't you, Rei?" she says, her Prakran accent rolling her words as she begins to rock him, her hand thumping rhythmically on his back. "Ever think of having some of your own?"

"Oh, no, I'm not—I don't even have a lover yet, so." Rei shrugs as she begins packing away her things. The child  _is_ very cute, though, already yawning in his mother's arms. She wonders, briefly, what it would be like to have little voices ringing between the walls of the shop.

 _"No?"_ Sunita grins. "So you are _not_ living together with your handsome magician in that shop of yours?"

 _"Asra?"_  Her voice cracks on the second syllable. "I'm his _apprentice!"_

Sunita laughs, a bright cackle that throws her whole head back. "So?" she says flippantly. "He is about your age, yes? And very attractive besides. You think you'd be the first to use that hustle to get a bit of loving?"

Rei gapes. _"It's not like that!"_

 _"Yet."_ Sunita's coal-black eyes twinkle as she looks Rei over. "Ah, I see from your blush that you have thought about it already."

"Good _day,_ Sunita!"

"Drop by my partner's stall in the market!" Sunita laughingly reminds Rei as she huffingly walks out the door. "They'll have your payment waiting!"

 

\---

 

It's late afternoon by the time she returns to the shop, weighed down with choice cuts from the butcher and some bread she'd purchased at the market. Asra is seated behind the counter, absently shuffling his deck, and it is with great relief (—and a mild disappointment that should be surprising but isn't, not really—) that she notes he has changed back into his usual pants as he rounds the corner to greet her.

"Welcome back," he says, drawing her into a one-armed hug, taking the shopping bag with the other and slinging it over his shoulder. "Everything go well?"

"Yeah. Sunita will be back on both feet in a few days, tops."

"No doubt thanks to your help." He ruffles her hair, smiling proudly down at her. "You really are amazing."

"It's—not that complicated a treatment, really," she mutters, bashful, then coughs. "How was the shop? Did Brennan come?"

 _"Mm-hmm,"_ Asra hums, mischief in the corner of his upturned mouth. "Asked for a reading, too, though I don't think he liked what the cards said." He shakes his head, white curls swaying above his glinting eyes.

"What did he ask?"

"Now, now, Rei," he teases, "you know readings are confidential."

She rolls her eyes, shoving him half-heartedly away, but he only laughs, and nuzzles playfully into her hair.

(He's been doing those kinds of things a lot, lately, but still every time he does, her heart never fails to skip a beat.)

"I don't think we'll have anymore customers for the day," he continues, "so I thought we could close up early and work on your magic."

"What did you have in mind?"

"You'll see." He grins. "I'll take these to the kitchen and you close up the shop?"

"Alright."

She watches him disappear up the steps at a jaunty clip as she takes off her shawl and hangs it by the door. She pauses there a moment, admiring the picture it makes; it always looks better, she thinks, when the coat pegs are full—her shawl and his coat and his hat all hanging in a neat line, unused for now while everyone's safely home.

She goes through the motions of closing up: putting out the lanterns, flipping over the sign at the window, locking the door and setting the wards for the night. When she finally makes it up the stairs to the second floor, Asra is already sitting at their rickety dining table, waiting.

"We're trying something new today," he says, but the way he fidgets in his seat, tenses and untenses his clasped fingers—things that she's since learned mean he's nervous—sets her on edge.

She sits across from him at their little table, and waits patiently if a bit uneasily for him to continue.

He raises a hand—fist clenched tight around something, and she holds hers out expectantly. He reaches out, then pulls back minutely, as if second-guessing his actions, before reluctantly placing the object in her open palm.

It's a necklace—the sparkling blue stone strung on black cord a perfect mirror to the one hanging around his neck. She glances up at him, curious, but he's staring holes into the stained wood of the table instead.

"It's an aquamarine," he tells her. "In some places, they call them—"

"—sailor's stones," she fills in abruptly, surprising even herself. Asra's head jerks up, gaze sharpening and boring into hers.

"That's right," he says, slow and careful. "They're said to protect travelers."

 _"And keep lovers faithful,"_ she murmurs, even though she doesn't know where her words are coming from.

_(Where has she heard that before?)_

"It's the same as yours," she adds, quietly, when Asra doesn't say anything for a long moment, the wood of the table creaking beneath his fingers.

He is studying her, wary. Like he's looking for something, _waiting_ for something. But then he sighs, and evidently, whatever he was hoping for, he doesn't find it. Instead he slips his own necklace over his head to dangle above her palm.

"They're earrings," he says. "See the hoop that goes around the cord?"

He's right. This close, it's obvious they're twins—the same shape, the same hue, the same gold loop that opens with a clasp, meant to be worn dangling from ears instead of strung around a neck.

"Use your magic," Asra instructs, withdrawing his pendant to slip it back over his head. The stone seems to shimmer when it thumps over his heart. "Tell me what you feel."

Obediently, she does as she's told, letting her magic prod at the jewel tentatively at first, then letting it lap over the necklace in gentle waves.

It comes slowly to her, almost reluctant; it's like reaching for a single leaf floating on the ocean waves—now drifting closer, and then pulling away. She grasps at a fleeting impression and latches onto it, yanking it to the forefront of her mind with such force that it scatters anything else the necklace might have yielded.

 _(I got you a present,_ someone says, whisper-soft, words murmured against someone else's mouth. It sounds a little bit like—)

_Asra?_

(Someone else exhales a short laugh.)

Just a little more focus, and she can almost feel a smile curving against her own lips.

 _(If you're here,_ they reply, speaking under their breath, words barely audible, _that's all the present I need.)_

"Rei?" Asra prompts, drawing her gently back from the strange aural memory, and she tries not to blush at the implications of the whispers she's gleaned.

 _"Warmth,"_ she tells him, which is not, precisely, a lie. The words—the _memory_ —had felt so, so _warm._ "It feels warm, like it's been left in the sun—no, that's not right; it's more like—it's like _napping_ in the sun . . . napping in the sun with someone beside you. Someone you trust."

Asra's eyes tighten at the corners, just the smallest bit. "What else?"

"A smile. Someone laughing." _You._  And something else, something that glimmers faintly in the stone's blue depths. "A protection spell," she deduces at last. "All of them warm."

 _"Anything else?"_ His voice has an undercurrent of strain to it, and she doesn't know what that means. She shakes her head.

"Well, that's—something, at least," he sighs, sagging in his chair like a stringless marionette. "You're alright? No headaches?"

She shakes her head again, and moves to give him back the necklace.

"No," he says, voice catching on a rasp, "keep it."

"You're giving this to me?"

There's a flash of— _something,_ in his eyes. Like sadness, or hurt. (Or _disappointment,_ perhaps. Like she's pitifully, _painfully_ lacking, somehow.) He schools his expression into his usual patient smile, only now it's _infuriating,_ masking up just one more secret, one more piece of his past she'll never get to know. She wants to take him by the shoulders and shake him.

 _Please,_ she wants to say, _tell me what I'm doing wrong!_

(But—)

"Keep it," is all he says, pushing back his chair, its legs scraping sharply on the floor as he rises, and makes his way quickly to the kitchen.

(—his secrets, his past, they all belong to another. That much, at least, is heartbreakingly clear.)

She hears him open cabinets, taking out pots and pans, before he settles into the familiar sounds of making dinner, and she understands that their lesson is done for the day.

She slips the necklace over her head, letting the blue pendant rest near her heart, and all she feels now from it is nostalgia, softly aching and bittersweet.

 

\---

 

She dreams that night of Asra (again), but this time he's just sleeping peacefully in the backroom, head pillowed on his arms as he slumps over the reading table. She sits across from him, resting her chin on her hand, counting out the slow, even breaths he takes. There's a book open in front of her, but the hazy, filtered quality of the dream doesn't let her read the words.

No matter; she is content to simply stay like this, basking in the quiet and the pale yellow sunlight spilling across the table. It's a long while—or it seems like it—before she notices Asra is holding something in his fist, the long black cord trailing out from between his fingers. And when she touches it—

—the scene changes: the room plunges suddenly and frighteningly into darkness, lit only by the eerie, ghoulish green glow of a single lamp. A sinister miasma coils in the air, making her shiver as gooseflesh breaks out along her arms.

Asra is still asleep, but his fingers are now caked in dirt, his nails crusted in what looks worryingly like dried blood. His hair is matted with soot and sweat. Tear tracks stain his cheeks, outlined by chalky smudges of gray.

 _"I'm coming, love,"_ he mumbles brokenly into the crook of his elbow. _"I'll bring you home."_

 

\---

 

She wakes up gasping for breath, immediately going still when she hears Asra shift beside her. She turns her head to look, worried that he's woken up _(and oh, but what is she supposed to say to him, if he has?)_ but he only rolls over to face her, making himself comfortable before his features smooth out once more in sleep.

She breathes a hissing, measured sigh, bringing her hand up to touch the cool stone resting against her sternum. She can feel her heartbeat through the aquamarine, hear its thudding slow and even out as she lays there awake.

She does not know what it is she just saw. She does not know whether it had been a dream or a vision or something else entirely. She does not know who Asra was speaking to, or to whom the pendant originally belonged. She does not know if they're still out in the vast everywhere he keeps vanishing to, waiting for him to bring them home.

She only knows the way Asra had called them _love,_ with tears on his cheeks and blood beneath his cracked fingernails.


	12. Where I Promise I'll Do Better

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Storm's here, folks! (◕ᴗ◕✿)
> 
> WARNING: Depictions of near-drowning.
> 
> Set a bit more than a year before the game starts, so a little less than two years post-amnesia. Asra learns the hard way that he has to let her go.

Asra's hand hovers behind her elbow as they walk through the woods in silence, ready to offer support should she stumble. The forest is quiet save for the rustling canopies and the distant warbling cries of unseen birds—musical, echoing calls in a secret language.

 _(Can all birds understand each other?_ he wonders. _Or do they just shout into the dark, hoping to be heard?)_

"Master," Rei asks, "where are we going?"

He looks down at her, pondering the sunlight dappling across her face. Her cheeks are a little rounder, these days; a little more filled out, and better colored. (A little more like she used to be.) She's come a long way from the gaunt, pallid little thing he'd found curled up on their bed, unconscious, but alive. _Alive._

 _They've_ come a long way, since they'd clawed themselves out of the rubble their lives had become.

"There's a cave in these woods," he explains, voice hushed. (He does not want to compete with the birds; does not want to be one of those who cry out into the uncaring world unheard.) "It's a hot spot for magic. For unlocking it, especially."

She's come a long way, but in many others she's still the same confused and frightened girl she was when she first reopened her eyes. Her magic is stronger, now, though still not what it once was. Still tentative, nervous, and almost _afraid._

Maybe he's been going about this all wrong. He's been trying to return her memories (unequivocally a disaster) and very hesitantly reteaching her magic, fearful of what she could do with no remembrance of all her years of careful self-control (a mistake, perhaps, on his part). Maybe—maybe her memories are tied to her magic, and restoring one restores the other. That's his theory, anyway. He hopes it works.

(He is running out of those, these days—theories, and hope.)

 

\---

 

The cave is cool when they step inside, the air inside pleasantly damp, if a little musty. Magic whispers throughout the cavern, calling out to them from deeper within, and he can feel her respond to the unknown energy with apprehension, anxiety wrapping around her like a shroud. Her magic ripples, flexing, almost like a shield. He reaches out with his own, soft and soothing, and feels her let her guard down a little.

"I'll lead," he says, flashing her a smile he hopes is comforting, "but can you make us a light, Rei?"

She takes a deep breath, centering herself, and a glow builds up in her hand, flickering uncertainly before she takes another breath and it steadies into a soft turquoise ball hovering above her palm.

He takes her other hand, and his smile only grows when she doesn't even flinch at the contact, merely squeezing back. "Ready?"

They head further into the tunnels, following the trickling sound of water and the whispering pull of old magic until they duck past a thick curtain of hanging moss and emerge into a grotto, lit by the golden light of late afternoon coming through the hole in the ceiling. Rei shakes her hand to dispel her magelight, gripping his fingers tighter as they carefully descend the steps hewn by the feet of countless pilgrims just like them. Slowly, catiously, they traverse the slippery path down to a level rock shelf that slopes gently into the calm, still surface of the pool.

The water level is much lower than he remembers, though still by no means shallow, and the spring itself looks clean enough, save for the bottom-most depths that remain murky and clouded. The flower remains, as always, at the very center, glowing tantalizingly in the sun. He helps her navigate over the moss-slick stones until they reach waterline.

"See the flower at the center?" he points out. "You follow the path the lily pads make to get to it, but you have to do it alone."

Her brows meet in the middle, her apprehension returning to the fore. _"Alone?"_

He gives her an encouraging smile. "You can do this, Rei. Just walk on over. I'll be right here."

She drops her satchel onto the dry rock, takes a calming breath, and hops onto the first lily pad. It bobs under her weight, soaking her up to the ankles, and she almost falls backward onto the rocks were it not for him pressing a hand against her back, pushing her upright.

"Careful," he warns. "They're less solid than they look." She bites her lip, and he squeezes her shoulders. "Go ahead."

She jumps onto the next leaf, and the next, and the next. She's more than halfway to the center of the pool when she pauses, hesitating, and looks back at him standing on the shore.

(A mistake.)

He nods, urging her forward, but when she turns and takes another jumping step, she miscalculates the force of her leap, landing closer to the edge of the leaf rather than the center.

The lily pad wobbles, and she glances frantically at him over her shoulder as she overbalances, windmilling her arms to keep from falling into the water—

She falls, and goes under.

Cold washes over him, almost as if he's the one who fell into the water.

 _She can swim,_ he tells himself, even as he drops his bag and shucks off his coat and yanks off his boots. _She can swim, she grew up by the gods-damned ocean—_

(But _she_ doesn't remember that, does she?)

He counts the seconds, staring at the burbling spot where she fell. When he reaches ten and she still hasn't surfaced, he runs, and dives in after her.

There's a moment of dizzy disorientation as he adjusts to the shift of gravity underwater. He looks around, frantic, his vision blurry in the green-tinted murk, until he spots her just ahead of him. She hasn't sunk very deep, but her foot has snagged on a tangle of water lily stalks, and she struggles to free herself, losing precious air the longer she tries. He maneuvers through the forest of vines to help, but the snarls hold her obstinately tight, and the bubbles streaming from her mouth and nose are tapering off.

 _I won't lose you here,_ he thinks. _I won't, I won't—_

(Not to my mistakes. Not again.)

In a last ditch effort, he gives up on untangling her ankle and cups her face in his hands, watching her eyes grow wide as he seals his lips over hers.

She stops struggling.

He closes his eyes and holds the spell in his mind, clearing it of every thought but that, visualizing the air moving from his lungs into hers, spreading to the tips of her fingers and her toes. Her magic surges forward to meet his, taking it into herself, making it her own. When he pulls away, her face is still frozen in a mask of shock, but bubbles no longer escape her nose and mouth.

She doesn't need to breathe.

Satisfied that she's no longer in immediate danger of drowning, he works her slowly free until the last stalk falls away, releasing her with a reluctant wriggle, and then he grabs her by the waist and hauls her to the surface. They break the calm stillness of the water, and he keeps his arm around her as they paddle back to the shore. He manages to drag her halfway out of the pool before his limbs give out and he collapses onto the warm rock out of sheer relief. She sprawls out beside him, coughing up water, but he has never been so glad to listen to her breathe, however ragged, that his whole body sags, and he leans over to lay his head on her shoulder, sobbing her name into her skin.

He can't even bring himself to care what a mess he must look like, sniveling into her shoulder. The fear of losing her a second time still holds him tightly in its grip. He feels her startle beneath him, before her hand crawls tentatively up his back to rest atop his head.

"You—" she gasps, still sputtering, still trying to catch her breath, "you got so far away!"

He sniffles against her neck. "Maybe you weren't supposed to look back," he chokes out. "I'm so sorry. I shouldn't have brought you here."

He remembers the fear in her eyes as she'd looked to him for help, and he'd been unable to do anything but reach uselessly out to her across the distance.

But, no—she'd been afraid before that, and still he'd pushed her forward despite it, desperate as he was for something, _anything_ to work, spurred on by his own bravado, his own selfishness—

And he'd almost lost her again.

(Hasn't he learned his lesson?)

He shudders, balling his fists into her clothes.

"Please," he says, leaning back to look at her, brushing clinging strands of hair away from her face. "I need to teach you a spell. Right now. If you remember to use it, this will never have to happen again."

She blinks up at him, and a slash of red darkens her cheeks.

"You mean," she says, swallowing, "the spell you did. Just now. Underwater?"

"The—" _Oh,_ he had kissed her before that, hadn't he? He feels his own face start to flush; it had honestly slipped his mind. "—breathing spell, yes."

"Does this mean—" she says, voice rising to a squeak, "does this mean you have to kiss me again?"

Well—

"No . . ." He doesn't _have_ to, exactly.

"Oh."

Which isn't to say he doesn't _want_ to.

(And the stripped-bare truth is: he would want nothing more.)

He takes her hands instead, pulling her up to a proper sit.

"Take a deep breath," he says, exaggerating an inhale. "Let it last."

It takes a few tries before she blinks, eyes glowing faintly blue with her magic, and stops breathing. He waits as she holds it for a minute, then two, then five, before she finally drops the spell, grinning hugely. Pride swells in his chest.

"Good," he whispers, voice going soft. He swipes an affectionate hand across her cheek, still damp with spring water. "Though maybe we shouldn't test it out quite so soon."

She frowns, and glances at the flower, sitting untouched at the center of the pool. "But we're already here—"

"Yes, but—" _What if, what if, what if—_

What if she's not ready?

What if something else goes wrong?

What if he loses her for good?

"—it's getting late," he says. A pathetic excuse, though a true one. Already the sunset streaming through the roof is turning a blushing pink, soon to deepen into purple twilight. "We'll come back another time, okay?"

She sighs, but takes the hand he offers anyway, allowing him to pull her up to her feet. "Okay."

He flips his bangs out of his eyes with his free hand, and quirks a brow when she snorts, amused.

"Hold still," she says instead of explaining.

She reaches up to pluck a bit of pond muck stuck on his forehead, just above his brow bone.

"Okay, got it."

She smiles, and she is so close, and so beautiful (—and he loves her and he misses her and he has almost lost her _again—_ ) that before he is aware of his own body moving, he's already leaning down—

—and he kisses her.

His eyes close automatically. The feel of her lips beneath his is half nostalgia and half new, and, as ever, a wonder.

The sharp breath she takes through her nose brings him back to his senses. He yanks himself away, ashamed of himself, of his irresponsible recklessness, only for her to surge forward and up, chasing his mouth, pulling him back down into another kiss. He teeters, unbalanced, and they fall backward into the shallows with a splash.

The sudden chill of the water breaks them apart. She's kneeling between his legs, crouched over him, while he keeps himself propped on one hand, the other gripping her waist. Their faces are still only inches apart.

Rei balances herself with one hand on his hip and the other braced against his chest, the tip of her thumb just barely brushing the aquamarine resting on his breastbone. The hand she has over his heart trembles faintly. He looks into her eyes to see them clouded with uncertainty and something a little bit like fear, and he _reels,_ because the last thing he wants is for her to be afraid of him. But her jaw moves as she bites the inside of her cheek, before her eyes flash, steely, and her fingers tighten in the soaked fabric of his shirt to yank him back into a kiss.

He shifts, arms immediately encircling her waist, drawing her closer, closer than he's ever dared, and his heart races when she presses herself closer still, her hands moving to grip the back of his shirt. Her mouth moves clumsily but earnestly against his, and it only makes him smile into the kiss, tilting his head to find a better angle.

And then something _clicks,_ and everything changes: she moves with the ease of familiarity, of muscle memory, and the kiss turns slower but heavier, weighed down by lost memories and lost time. He clutches her to him, kissing her with pent-up desperation, groaning when she meets him turn for turn.

The water around them is beginning to color with their magic by the time they break apart gasping for breath. Turquoise and lavender swirl around them, between them, streaked with white and gold and every other beautiful hue imaginable. Tendrils of light creep up from the water, crawling up the walls, seeping into the sigils and patterns carved deep into the rock, making them shimmer and glow.

He's kissed her three times in as many years, all of them occurring within the past afternoon alone. Only three times since he'd slammed the shop door and walked away when she needed him most, three years ago. A lifetime, literally, for her— _more_ than a lifetime, even, because she's only been around for less than two.

"Rei," he whispers, hoarse and breathless, leaning his forehead against hers. His heart is pounding in his ears; he can feel hers marching to the same rhythm, thudding through her skin against his chest. When he looks up at her, she is close enough that his lashes brush against her cheek. The sparkling light of their mingled magic bounces off the water to dance her eyes, compelling him to say—

_"I love you."_

(Another mistake.)

She blinks. Her eyes grow wide for a fraction of a second—a brief, shining moment when he dares to _hope_ —before squeezing shut, and she doubles over with a hiss and a whimper.

And just like that, it's like the whole world freezes over.

"Rei?"

A strangled screech lodges in her throat. She wrenches herself away, trembling, fingers crooked like claws clutching at her head.

 _"No,"_ he whispers, horrified. (What has he done what has he done what has he _done—_ ) _"No no nonono,_ Rei, _breathe._ Try to—try to ground yourself," he begs, taking her hand and curling it around the aquamarine dangling from her neck. "Stay with me."

She's gasping short, ragged breaths, eyes clamped shut. She whimpers.

"Rei," he says, cradling her face in his hands. _"Focus._ Stay with me, please." He shivers, from the cold and the dread and the _fear. "Please._ I don't want to make you forget again."

She manages to hiss out, _"Forget wh—"_ before she crumples, curling into herself with a scream. Her hand clutches her pendant, knuckles white.

 _"Okay!"_ he shouts, fighting to be heard over her pained cries. (Helpless birds, shouting into the dark.) "Okay, I'll make you forget! Please, just—"

He presses his thumbs to her temples, already calling forth the spell, but she reaches up to touch his face with her free hand, shaky fingers digging into his cheek.

 _"Wait,"_ she gasps. "Wait, don't—"

Traitor hope rises up in his chest again. Maybe this time she'll be strong enough. Maybe this time she'll remember without breaking.

Maybe this time he won't have to make her forget.

"Do you—" He swallows. "Do you remember anything?"

 _(Please, love, remember me._ Remember me, remember me, _remember me—)_

But she shakes her head and looks at him as if through a haze, eyes already drifting in and out of focus.

"I don't—" she grinds out, "—want—to _forget—"_

She grits her teeth, fighting the waves of pain, and struggles to hold his gaze. Her blunt nails bite into his skin, leaving little crescent-moon divots.

 _"Asra,"_ she says, and _oh,_ that cuts right into what's left of his heart. (She has not called him by name in more than a year. Why now? Why like this?) "Need—need you to— _know,_ Asra, I—love— _love—"_

She cuts herself off with another scream, louder than before. She bends over her knees, sobbing, and Asra cannot bear to watch her anymore, cannot bear to see what his selfishness has done to her.

(He is too selfish to be worthy of staying with her.)

He curls around her, over her, his lips pressed against her back.

(He is too selfish to bring himself to leave.)

"I love you," he whispers, and it is a broken apology against her clinging clothes, with the warmth of her skin seeping through the fabric. _"Forget."_

He closes his eyes as he weaves the spell, and the power swirling in the water answers his haywire magic. He tugs at it, shaping it to his will, and directs it all into her. It clashes with her own magic, battling with it, churning the pool around them into a maelstrom with them at the very center, until finally something _snaps,_ and all the water bursts outward in a spray of mist. It splashes onto the cave floor, the walls, the ceiling, leaving him to kneel on the wet rock as he clutches her limp form to his chest.

She's stopped screaming.

But her eyes are half-lidded, blank; her breath so slow as to be almost imperceptible. Everywhere he touches, her skin is so, so frighteningly _cold._

No. No, no, he already made her _forget—_

He calls forth the spell again, takes her memory of the kiss, the last hour, the entire afternoon, all the way back until the moment they woke up this morning inadvertently tangled in each other's arms.

Nothing happens.

He starts crying again, out loud this time, huge, gasping sobs that squeeze all the air from his lungs. He clutches her closer still, tucking her head under his chin, and this time the screams that echo in the cave are his own.

He does not know how long he stays there, sobbing on the cold stone floor of the cave, but when he looks up the stars are already out, shining silver against the indigo sky.

She'd explained to him once how they spoke to her, when they were just two awkward kids in a tiny outrigger canoe, and Vesuvia was just lights on the water. She'd dipped her fingers in the sea, and when she flicked the saltwater off her skin the drops flew like little diamonds. Her arm had been warm against his as she looked up at the stars.

 _Cryptic little things,_ she'd called them. _Sometimes they talk, in pictures, or in words. Mostly they just whisper, or maybe laugh._ Her eyes had narrowed. _Once, I heard them sing._

 _Oh?_ he'd asked. _Just the once?_

 _Yes,_ she'd said, and turned away to hide the blush that crept across her cheeks. _The first time you kissed me._

He looks up at the stars now where they shine through the hole in the cave roof. He can't hear them, but somehow their silence feels more mocking than anything else.

 _"I don't care anymore!"_ he rails at them. "I don't _care,_ you hear me!? I don't care if she never remembers me!" His hair is soaked through, sticking sodden to his forehead, dripping rivulets of pond water on his cheeks that mingle with saltwater grief. "I'll stop trying if that's what you want! I won't try to make her remember again!" He tightens his hold on her and he shivers. She is so cold in his arms she might as well be a corpse. "Just— _please,"_ he sobs, begging whoever, _whatever_ is listening, _"I can't lose her again."_

As he sits there crying, rocking her listless form back and forth in his embrace, faint glimmers begin pulsing down the walls, streaking across the rocks. As if drawn by his anguish or his own fraying magic, light trickles down the stones, pooling around the two of them in a swirl of color, before finally surging into both of them in a warm, whispering rush. By the time he blinks away the spots from his vision, she's breathing evenly, eyes closed in peaceful sleep, and completely dry.

Still sniffling, he lays her gently down and gathers his coat, his boots, their bags. When he's ready, he hefts her up again, and begins to make his way out of the tunnels.

They leave behind the empty pool, its floor littered with lily pads and moss and muck, strewn limply all across the rock bottom. The cave is dark, the magic sigils on the walls all faded away. He keeps walking, and doesn't even use magic to help carry her, choosing instead to feel the weight of her and all his mistakes bearing down on his arms.

He brings her home.

 

\---

 

The scenery of his dream that night is both familiar and not.

Miles upon miles of cracked earth stretch endlessly toward the horizon, the salt flat parched dry as bleached bone.

(There used to be water here, in her gateway, turning the ground into a perfect starry mirror.)

Now it's just salt in the broken earth and a gathering storm in the overcast sky, and the girl sitting in the center of a vast emptiness, singing a sad song.

 _"We toil through the frost_  
_And ache for the sun_  
_For grief never lost_  
_And love never won—"_

He comes to stand behind her, watching her pile salt into a tiny mountain. She is young, here—much younger than he'd ever known her—but still undeniably _her._

(He would know her anywhere.)

She tips her head back to look at him, smiles, and says, to his numb shock: "It's you!"

She scrambles up to her feet, white grains clinging to her legs, coating her feet. She only comes up to his lower chest, and she frowns.

"You're big," she says, poking curiously at his belly with her brows furrowed, before her expression smoothens out, stretching into a wide, excited grin. _"Did you find me!?"_

That jogs at something in his memory, something too nebulous to name. But the way she looks up at him, all trust and open eyes— _that_ wrings out something very much like _guilt._

He falls to his knees before her, presses his forehead to the salty ground in a penitent's bow as his tears fall to the earth like unceasing rain.

 _"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry,"_ he sobs. "I'll do better. I'll _be_ better for you, I promise."

"Hey," her soft voice sounds above him, still high with youth, and worried. A small hand reaches down to pet his hair. "Why are you crying?"

(Why are _you_ crying?)

Where has he heard that before?

 

\---

 

He jerks awake in the faded little red armchair he'd dragged next to the bed when he hears her gasp, choking on a sob. Immediately he's scrambling across the sheets to reach her, blinking in the bright morning light, fighting the wave of vertigo from his too-quick rising.

"Hey, _hey,"_ he says, rubbing soothing circles onto her back. "What is it? Does it hurt anywhere?"

She shakes her head no, and keeps crying.

"Rei," he pleads, worry wrapping insidious vines around his heart. She's never been like this before. _"Talk_ to me, _please._ What's wrong?"

"I—" she hiccups, eyes already puffy. Had she started crying in her sleep? "I think I forgot something important." She rubs her fists against her eyes, smearing salt-sticky tracks on her cheeks. "But I don't know what it is."

_(I don't want to forget—)_

He draws her up into a sitting position, letting her stain the fabric at his shoulder with her tears. "Hey, it's okay," he reassures her.

"It's _not!"_ she says, rearing back. "I know it was _important_ but I don't remember what it _was!"_

_(Need you to know, Asra, I love—)_

"Rei—"

"I don't even remember anything from before two years ago!" she shouts, voice roughened raw with sleep and sorrow both. "What else did I forget? What else will I keep forgetting?"

_(Asra, I love—)_

He stays silent as she starts crying again, unable to say a word.

"I'm so _sick_ of not knowing anything. About—about my past, or—or magic, or even who I am!"

She sobs and shakes, wrapping her arms around her knees, and what's left of his heart breaks for her.

This is all her life, he realizes. He has perhaps borne the heavier burden, but this is _all she has_ —less than two years of relearning to walk and talk, of missing memories, of being left behind.

 _"Rei,"_ he says, gathering her up into his lap and squeezing her tight. "I am so sorry."

_I am sorry for leaving you. For having left you, when you needed me most._

_I am sorry because I will have to leave you again._

"I just—" she sniffs. "I want to _know._ I want to _remember."_

"I know. I'm sorry."

 _I am sorry,_ he thinks, _that I made you forget._

(Even sorrier still, that he would do it again, if he had to.)

She hiccups into the crook of her arm as her tears keep falling. "I'm—I'm just so _tired_ of being the useless amnesiac _witch_ who doesn't know how to do anything!"

That's not true!" he protests, running a hand over her tangled hair, down her trembling back. She is his _heart_ and she is  _hurting_ and oh, how he  _aches._ "You've come so far, Rei. I _know,_ I've seen you. Your magic is getting stronger everyday."

"I can't read the cards like you can," she counters, sniveling. "Or do that thing where you put spilled tea back into the cup. Or fix that plate I broke last week." Her voice drops, quiet. "Or heal scars."

She takes his free hand and traces the faint white lines on his fingers and knuckles, the only scars he's never bothered to heal. She wraps her palms around his hand and concentrates, but when she pulls away, they're still there, the pale, damning testament to his greatest failure marring his brown skin. She sighs, shoulders drooping in dejection.

"Not being able to do the things I can do doesn't make you useless, Rei," he reassures her, curling his scarred fingers around her own. "Your magic is just different, that's all."

"But what's the _point?"_ she asks. "I can't help anyone. I can't even help myself."

He sighs, his breath ruffling her hair. That compassion, that drive to _help_ is so familiar, so _her._

(And so _worrying;_ it's what got her killed in the first place.)

She hunches into herself, shying away from his touch. "It isn't fair to you, having to keep taking care of me."

(Oh, _Rei._ ) He smiles, trying to peer into her eyes. "I don't mind?"

It's not quite _I love you._

(But he will not tell her _that_ again for a long, long time.)

She looks away, refusing to meet his gaze. Her voice is soft when she speaks, tinged with something almost like _shame,_ "You've wasted two years of your life on me already."

He can't help it; he snorts, the idea so _ridiculous_ to him as to be laughable.

"Is _that_ what you think?" he asks gently. "That I'm wasting my time?"

She doesn't answer.

 _If only you knew,_ he thinks, a hollowness caving out his chest, _what I gave up for even just one more day with you._ Two years and counting is a luxury he's grateful for every time he wakes.

"Rei," he says, taking her hand, uncurling the fist she's balled it into. "The only thing I regret about the last two years is not spending more of it with you."

It's still not _I love you._

(He wishes, desperately, that she'd understand.)

She grimaces, but can't hide the minute upward quirk of her watery smile. "Flatterer."

"It's true!" he laughs, and combs his fingers through her hair. She still smells a little bit like wet moss, but she's here. She's _here._ "I wish I didn't have to go away so often. I don't like leaving you alone."

Whisper-soft: "Then _don't."_

She's looking up at him like she did before she'd kissed him in the cave. He sighs, and tucks her face into his neck instead. He holds her there, rubbing a hand up and down along her arm as tension bleeds out from her body.

He doesn't say _I can't,_ but he thinks she knows what he means, anyway. He doesn't know who it hurts more.

"You're wrong, you know," he murmurs, after a while, when her soft sniffling dies down finally into silence. "You've helped so many people in the city." (So much more than you know.) "You help _me,"_ he says, "just by being here. So thank you, Rei. I honestly don't know what I'd do without you."

He remembers how lost he was, when he'd lost her. The unspeakable things he'd done without her to temper him. The joy of finally seeing her again, despite the burn of the mark flaring over his chest.

He remembers how she kissed him; how he'd felt her heartbeat against his own, and how, for just a moment, it was like being _whole_ again.

And he remembers the way she'd said—

_(Asra, I love—)_

_"—you, too."_

He startles, shaken. "What?"

She looks up at him. "I _said,_ thank you, too. For being here when I need you."

(Funny, him not doing exactly that is what got them into this mess in the first place.)

She rests her head back against his shoulder, and he feels her cheek bunch up as she adds, teasing, "Even though you're gone half the time. And you never tell me where you're going. And you wait until you're out of clothes before doing the laundry. And you keep forgetting to sweep out the stove. And you leave dishes in the sink for _days—"_

He laughs as she lists all his peculiar faults, and never once touches on the ones that have hurt her the most.

(Not that she _could,_ in any case.)

"I'm sorry," he says, only a little melancholy as he nuzzles into her hair. "I'll do better."

It's the only promise he can make her.

"Good," she huffs, and burrows further into his embrace. And he just holds her close, for the time being, making the most of it before he has to let her go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title, by the way, is from the song ["Light" by Sleeping at Last](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bk69DmpCYrw), which, um. Y'all should go listen to, like. Right now. While the chapter is still fresh. :3


	13. Where I Love You Whatever Way I Can

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNING: Mild (arbitrary use of mild, your mileage may vary) descriptions of gore in certain dream sequences, some of which may also qualify as self-harm; also implied suicidal ideation, self-hate, and PTSD. This is a heavy chapter, I think, so stay safe and read at your own risk!
> 
> Also, if you haven't read [ You Don't Have to Climb These Walls](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16155728), it's recommended you do so before this chapter, as it might ~~hurt~~ help a bit more to know some context.
> 
> Set immediately after chapter 12, so a year-ish pre-game. Rei deals with the fallout of things she can't remember.

Asra comes down with a fever, the evening after she'd woken up inexplicably crying and smelling faintly of wet moss, with a whole day lost to her faulty memory.

He'd started sneezing late in the afternoon, and by nightfall she is helping him into bed, grabbing her favorite blanket—the pretty woven one, with the star patterns; the one Asra's friend gave him along with his guitar—and tucking it around his shivering form. When she puts a hand to his forehead, his skin is burning up like a furnace.

"I should sleep in the backroom so you don't catch anything," he protests, even as he sags weakly against the pillows. She thinks, by the distant way he's been acting all day, that he would have slept in the backroom regardless, as he's sometimes wont to do.

(Less so, lately; she doesn't know why he's starting this again now.)

"Don't be stupid," she says, with more bite than she means to. She is worried, far more than a simple fever should make her, but now is not the time to think about why that is.

 _He has a cold,_ she tells herself as she heads into their kitchen to make him something warm. He has a _cold_ and she is an _apothecary_ and she knows what to do. He'll be _fine._

Faust slithers into the kitchen after her, climbing up her leg as she boils water for both the yarrow infusion and the basil-ginger tea. Faust coils around her torso, resting her scaly head on Rei's shoulder with a soft, sad hiss.

"Don't worry, Faust. He'll be fine," Rei reassures her, giving her a light scritch on the chin. She pauses. "Do you know _how_ he got sick, though?"

Faust tilts her head, then flicks her tongue out once.

Rei sighs. "Well, I guess you couldn't tell me even if you did, huh?"

She sets the yarrow to steep in a bowl of hot water, then begins preparing the tea. She brings it over to him when it's done, stirring in the honey as she crosses the room back to the bed they share.

"Sit up and drink this, please," she says, sitting primly beside him on the mattress, hands glowing with a cooling spell around his mug.

Asra rises with a groan of exertion, but he does as she asks, draining it in one long swig. When he's done, he lets his hands drop to his lap, tapping his fingers against the empty cup. He bites his lip, looking like he wants to say something, but doesn't.

"How are you feeling?" she asks, when he evidently chooses to stay silent.

One side of his mouth quirks up, but his eyes remain downcast, staring into the bottom of his chipped paisley mug. He shrugs. "Still alive, I guess."

It feels like she's missing some kind of joke, but she can't begin to guess what. "Well, good," she says instead. "I'm putting a lot of effort into keeping you that way."

He actually snorts a laugh, but there is a heaviness, still, in his eyes, hidden beneath the pale sweep of his lashes. He still won't look straight at her.

"Thank you," he says, handing her back the empty cup, very carefully avoiding touching her fingers, "for taking care of me."

"Of course," she says, then shrugs, aiming for nonchalance even as her grip tightens around the ceramic. "Why wouldn't I?"

What she means is: _you're always taking care of me,_ and _I hate seeing you like this,_ and _I love you, please feel better soon._

Asra just smiles—a small, melancholy thing—and settles back down into the pillows, huddling into himself beneath the blankets and slipping into an uneasy doze.

She rises and pads back to the kitchen on quiet feet, intent on letting him rest. She does not know what caused his illness, nor the sudden bout of renewed aloof withdrawal, but regardless, she is staying right here, and she's going to take care of him.

(She's long decided, now: she will love him quietly, unobtrusively, in whatever way she can. In whatever way she is allowed.)

 

\---

 

It gets worse before it gets better.

She fights back the heaviness of her eyelids as she waits for the camphor oil to finish distilling—she's stayed up through the night, extracting essences from the lavender and the eucalyptus and the mint, and finally succumbs to exhaustion almost as soon as she extinguishes the burner and stoppers the camphor flask, falling asleep slumped over her potions worktable. She jerks awake in the pre-dawn darkness, a little disoriented, and moves immediately to finish preparing the salve when she hears a repeat of the sound that must have woken her.

The creak of the bedframe. Is Asra tossing in his sleep?

But then—footsteps, then drawers sliding open. What is he doing at this time of night?

Quietly, she makes her way up to the living space on the second floor, only to be greeted by the sight of Asra standing before the dresser mirror, a pair of scissors in his hand, cutting his hair. Already a clump of white fluff has gathered at his feet; the hair at his nape, previously grown out to just about brush the topmost knob of his spine, has been cropped short, exposing the back of his neck. He snips at the strands framing his face, so that they fall against his cheek instead of his chin.

"Mas—Asra?" she calls out softly, not wanting to spook him.

He freezes, then turns around slowly, eyes widening when he spots her by the stairway landing. He looks like he's seen a ghost.

_"Rei?"_

"What are you doing?" she whispers. Here, in the darkest hours of the night, it seems too loud, still.

Asra blinks, gaze sliding toward the scissors in his hand, before he immediately drops it, as if startled he's holding it in the first place. It thumps on the old wood floor, almost deafening in the silence.

She crosses over to him, taking him by the hand and leading him back to the bed.

"Let's just go to sleep, okay?" she says, slipping under the covers, sitting up and staring at him until he slowly, tentatively does the same. He lays on his side facing her, and she pulls the covers over his shoulder, stroking his cropped-short hair as his eyes begin to slide closed.

"Am I dreaming?" he asks, barely above a whisper, almost as if he's talking to himself.

She thinks of the slow, methodical way he'd cut his hair, the blank look on his face in the mirror, and tells him, honestly, "I don't know." She brushes his bangs out of his eyes; she should fix the uneven strands tomorrow. "But I'm here."

He shivers despite the balmy summer evening. His skin is still much too warm under her hand.

"I woke up and you were _gone,"_ he says, forlorn and somewhat accusatory all at once.

"I fell asleep downstairs," she admits. "Making the camphor salve."

"Camphor salve?" His eyes flicker open again.

"For your cold, remember?"

He blinks again. "Wha—why aren't we in the backroom?"

Now it's _her_ turn to blink. "Why would we be?"

He looks up at her, uncomprehending, before some kind of realization lights up his eyes briefly, and he sighs. "Not dreaming, then," he concludes, eyes slipping shut as he buries his face against her hip. She thinks he's gone right back to sleep, but after a moment he asks, in a tiny, almost frightened voice, _"Stay?"_

"I'll be right here," she promises, despite her confusion, and leans against the headboard as he falls back into a what is hopefully a more restful sleep. Outside the window, the stars murmur agitatedly, echoing her own worry coiling tightly in her chest.

 

\---

 

"What were you even thinking, honestly?" she asks him in the harsh light of morning, after she sits him down on a chair in front of the dresser, still wrapped in a blanket. At least he's no longer shivering overly much.

"Shouldn't you be manning the shop right now?" he deflects, not meeting her gaze in the mirror. She tilts his head forward and he complies, sitting patient and still as she neatens out the haphazard cut of his hair.

"Business has been doing well the past few weeks. We can afford to stay closed for a couple of days."

His lower lip juts in a pout, before he mumbles, _"Sorry,"_ and shuffles under the blanket. Fiddling his hands, maybe. "It's not so bad a cold, though, you know."

She stares at him in the mirror, unimpressed; she's pretty sure he has pneumonia.

 _"I don't mind,"_ she tells him, an echo of his own words, and shrugs. "Less work for me." She combs down the hair at the back of his head, checking to make sure it's even before she rounds his chair to begin working on the front. "Will you tell me _how_ you got sick, though?"

He still won't look at her, even as she trims his bangs. "Got soaked in the rain, that's all."

"We haven't had rain recently, though?"

He shrugs, shoulders rising and falling beneath the indigo fabric. And then it clicks—

"Did it rain that day?" she asks. "The one I don't remember?"

He goes still. Doesn't answer.

She lets her hands fall to her sides, looking down at his bowed head, and presses, "Is it my fault you got sick?"

That makes his head snap up, messy curls flopping above his suddenly sharp gaze. "No, of course not."

She purses her lips. "Would you be honest with me if it was?"

He flinches at that, and she immediately regrets it. But still he meets her gaze head-on, not a single shred of doubt in his violet eyes. "It's not your fault, Rei." A pause, and he adds, quieter, "If anything, it's entirely mine."

She doesn't believe him.

(This is what they've been reduced to: half-truths and not-lies and eyes that never quite meet; hearts that can't seem to hold a conversation, and secrets that come out only in their sleep.)

 _I love you,_ she wants to tell him, desperately. It's the only truth she has left that she's sure of.

But she knows: he will not believe her. So instead she takes his bangs between her index and middle finger, stretching it out to its full length until it covers his eyes, and begins snipping away once more.

 

\---

 

She spends the better part of the afternoon weeding the garden. Asra is still sleeping off his fever, and she doesn't have to mind the shop, so she retreats like a coward out onto the balcony, surrounding herself in the calm silence of the lush greenery. She needs to harvest more yarrow, anyway.

Faust slithers up to her when she's finished working. She's sitting on the floor, watching the sky turn orange and pink above her, when her master's familiar crawls over her lap, plopping herself on a loose coil atop her thighs.

"Hello, Faust," Rei greets her. "Is he doing alright?"

Faust gives her a brief but friendly enough flick of the tongue, waves of calm emanating from her, which Rei takes as a yes. Absently, she runs her hand over Faust's scales, leaning back to look up at the sky once more.

"What's he not telling me, Faust?" she mumbles, eyes fixed on some kind of seabird riding the wind in the clouds, too far away to properly make out.

But Faust, like her master, doesn't reply, save for the idle curl of her tail in response to her scritches. Rei sighs.

The solitary bird circles overhead, piercing the air with a mournful cry.

 

\---

 

She returns from the market the next morning only to be greeted by the sight of Asra hurrying out the shop door, frantically shoving his arms into his coat. Faust is biting insistently at his sleeve, her tail wrapped around the door handle in an attempt to stop him from leaving.

"Faust, let _go—_ " he says, trying to tug his arm away, and Rei hurries the last few steps to the shop, the shopping bag heavy with groceries thumping against her hip.

"And just where do you think _you're_ going?" she snaps, worry leaking out as irritation.

He freezes. "Wha—" He takes her in as he stands dumbfounded there on the stoop. "Where did _you_ go?" he counters, blinking, his scarf hanging askew around his shoulders.

"To the market, like I said in my note," she huffs, taking him by the arm and hustling him back inside. "What are you doing out of bed? You're still sick."

"I, uh. Didn't see your note," he admits, and she _dearly_ hopes that flush is out of embarrassment, and not a spike in his fever. "I couldn't find you anywhere, and I thought—well. It doesn't matter."

She sighs, helping him out of his coat and scarf, hanging them on the pegs by the door. Faust slithers into his shirt, giving him a light nip on the nose in what Rei assumes is a reprimand.

 _"Ow,"_ Asra grumbles, but he allows himself to be led back to bed, pausing only briefly by the big map they have pinned to the wall to unstick her note. He lays himself back down without much fuss, booted feet hanging over the edge of the mattress as he peruses her message. "Huh. So you _did_ leave a note."

She raises an exasperated brow at him as she shakes out the blanket, waiting for him to toe off his boots before draping the sheet over him. "Even if I didn't, I don't see why you'd have to charge off after me, especially in your state."

"I didn't know where you were," he says, as if that's explanation enough. With how cryptic he usually is, maybe he thinks it actually is.

"You should have known I was coming back," she chides him, rearranging his boots neatly by the bed. _"I'm_ not the one with a penchant for disappearing into the blue."

Asra only pulls the blanket over his head, saying nothing. She sighs, shaking her head, and leaves her inscrutable master in order to start on breakfast.

(It's odd—for someone who comes and goes as he pleases, he has such a strange fear of being left behind.)

 

\---

 

And while Asra's body fights off a fever, his mind battles with something more insidiously sinister. He starts having nightmares—bad ones, that make him cry out in the night, leaving him gasping for breath upon waking. It makes her heart ache something awful, seeing him like this; she can treat a sickness of the body, but she cannot even begin to guess the pain that ails his mind.

"Master," she calls out, sitting up and reaching out across the moonlit gap between them to grasp his shoulder. _"Master."_

"I'm sorry. I didn't mean it," he babbles in his sleep, cheeks shiny with tears in the dim light. _"I didn't mean it!"_

"Wake up," she says urgently, a little frightened now. She shakes him harder. "Master— _Asra, wake up!"_

_"No!"_

His eyes snap open, wide, frantic, unseeing. She tightens her grip.

"Hey," she whispers, coaxing him gently by the shoulder to face her and carding her fingers through his sweat-damp hair. His breathing slows ever so slightly under her ministrations, and his glassy eyes gradually come to focus on her. "It's alright. It was just a bad dream."

Asra laughs, sharp and unhappy, as he throws an arm over his eyes. "It wasn't."

She pauses. There is something _jagged_ about this Asra, a side to him she's not sure she's ever seen before. His pain feels like a thing alive, ready to swipe at her if she gets too close. "Do you want to talk about it?"

He shakes his head.

"Okay," she acquiesces easily. "Do you want tea? Water?"

He shakes his head again.

Another pause, longer. She thinks about what he used to do, whenever she got nightmares. And then she asks, so softly, "Do you want a hug?"

He goes still. And then, very carefully, he nods.

First things first: she lays a hand over the nightmare-ward etched on the headboard, concentrating, until her magic pools beneath her palm. She charges the sigil, and when it thrums steadily with the spell, she lays herself back down beside Asra and pulls him close, tucking his head under her chin, easy as anything.

"I'm sorry to have woken you," he mumbles against her neck.

She squeezes him, brief but reassuring. "I don't mind," she repeats firmly, and hopes he knows how true it is.

He just sighs against her chest, mumbling a soft _sorry_ again, and that's how she knows he doesn't believe it. She can only run her hand in soothing lines up and down his back, praying to whoever might be listening to give him some respite, if only for a little while.

 _Please,_ she begs, _let him rest. Let him rest. He does not deserve this._

Asra shudders, pressing just that little bit closer to her, and she continues stroking his back as they wait for dawn to find them.

 

\---

 

She wakes to find that Asra's fever has broken, which is an infinite relief. His breathing comes even, and his skin is cool beneath the hand she has pressed to the back of his shirt.

And then she realizes, quite belatedly, that his face is pressed to her neck, the tip of his nose nestled in the dip of her collarbone. His hair is blindingly white in the morning light.

She stops breathing.

But still, Asra's heart beats slow and steady against her own, his breath ticklish on her skin. It is a losing battle, in truth, so she surrenders and takes a tentative inhale—

—whereupon she is immediately assaulted by the smell of him, the smoke-tea-rainwater scent that clings to him everywhere he goes. His hair, especially, always seems to smell like a clean, fresh spring, and she doesn't know if that's because of his magic or something else entirely.

She doesn't move. Doesn't want to. She _should_ —the sun's long been up and she needs to water the garden and start breakfast and restock the shelves downstairs—

But Asra's arm is still slung around her waist, his fingers clutching the back of her shirt. His breaths come slow and steady, _peaceful,_ and he needs the sleep after last night.

And . . . he is warm, and soft, and _beautiful,_ and _oh,_ she loves him, she really does—even if she is only allowed this: a glass-fragile trust in the vulnerable hours between dusk and dawn. She cannot be his lover, but that's alright. It is enough to be his harbor. It is enough to be his home.

(Isn't it?)

The shop can stay closed for one day more.

 

\---

 

(If only his nightmares left with his fever.)

 

\---

 

It's not even three days later that Asra comes down to the shop proper, already dressed in his coat and scarf just as she's closing up for the night. She wracks her brain to remember when he'd returned from his latest journey. A week ago? A week and a half? Just before the blank void of the day she's forgotten?

"You're leaving again?" (She tries to keep the wheedle out of her voice.) "But you just got better!" (She fails.)

"I won't be gone long," he says, grabbing his hat from the coat pegs. "Make sure to lock up after me."

"But— _wait—"_

He stops in the open doorway, one hand freezing in the middle of pulling his scarf up over his nose. He raises his eyebrows at her, waiting. She scrambles, and ends up saying the first thing she thinks of.

"Did you pack something warm?"

His hand falls, scarf slipping just below his mouth, allowing her the sight of his smile, small and secret and achingly sweet. "I won't be going very far this time," he says. "But, yes. I did."

She wants to ask him where _not far_ is, but she is tired of not receiving answers. "You should take this, too," she says, grabbing a pot of the camphor salve from the shelf behind her, as well as a bottle of butterfly weed suspension. "And this. Just in case."

His eyes soften as he crosses back over to her and takes the offered items, storing them solemnly away in his messenger bag.

"Thank you," he breathes, a hand coming to rest atop her head.

"Sure. Be—be careful."

He runs his hand over her hair, smoothing down the unruly waves. "I will," he says, and, after what seems to be a brief moment of hesitation, he leans down to plant a gentle kiss to the top of her head. "Stay safe."

And then he's leaving, exiting out into the street, and as always, he very carefully does not slam the door as he goes.

 

\---

 

She dreams that night in black and white.

She is standing out in their street, wrapped in pale fog and mist, watching Asra—that _is_ Asra, isn't it?—pound on the door of the shop. She doesn't recognize him at first, seeing him only from behind; the sight of white hair gathered in a short ponytail at the base of his neck throws her off, a little. But it's him, undeniably.

(She thinks, somehow, she'd know him anywhere. Any _when._ )

The only thing that stands out in the grayscale world is the big red cross mark painted sloppily across the wood of the door. Asra keeps banging it with his fists, the blood on his knuckles dripping down his wrists like black ichor in the monochrome nightmare.

The door remains uncaringly shut.

 _"Please!"_ he screams, voice raw with tears. "Please, I'm sorry! _I didn't mean it!"_

 _The keys are hidden in the marigolds,_ she thinks. A beat. _How does she know that?_

And then, _who is he apologizing to, here at the shop?_

But more importantly, the skin of Asra's knuckles has split, shiny flesh and bits of white bone peeking through, and she cannot stand to see him keep hurting himself. She runs forward, wraps her arms around his waist and _yanks—_

They topple backwards, but instead of cobbled streets they land in a tangled heap on the powdery surface of dry, cracked earth. She thinks it's sand at first, but when she wipes away the grains from her cheek, her palm comes away covered in tiny white crystals, shimmering faintly in the dark.

 _Salt,_ she thinks. _It's salt._

But: Asra is still shivering in her arms, choking on his own sorrow, and that always comes first.

"Asra," she whispers, tightening the arms she still has slung around his waist. "Asra, you're safe."

(It's strange, isn't it? She can never seem to call him _Master_ when she's dreaming.)

He scrambles upright between her knees, turning to face her with wide-eyed incredulity.

"Rei?"

She does not know what comes over her. Perhaps it is the cracked-open vulnerability framed by his damp lashes; perhaps it is the fact that he is still painted in muted shades of gray. Perhaps it is even something her heart has secreted away; a memento from the forgotten day demarcating Asra's earnest, casual affection and his sudden about-face into aloofness. But somewhere between her fingers digging into the salty earth and the mischievous twinkling of overhead starlight, an irrevocable compulsion grips her, and she leans forward, pressing her lips lightly, gently, to his own.

In the split-second between the kiss and waking up, she swears the dreamworld bursts into dazzling, blinding color.

 

\---

 

She lays in the dark, wondering.

More puzzle pieces. More questions than answers.

(She can ask as many questions as she wants, but she thinks the answers don't belong to her, either.)

Here is everything she knows:

Asra had loved someone, once.

(Just the once.)

His love clings to him like a ghost, hounding him in his sleep, apparitions of past affections peering through the haunted windows of his eyes. She wonders if he will ever put these specters to rest.

(Some days she wonders if he even wants to.)

And once, someone had loved Asra dearly, too.

She should be happy for it; she _is._ It's what he deserves—to be wanted, to be cherished, to be loved, wholly and without reserve. And she knows—whatever reason they may have had for leaving—they _did_ love him, and more than she ever could besides. Because sometimes when she touches the aquamarine he gave her, the warmth of that love still lingers, faint echoes of past happiness thrumming in the jewel beneath her fingers.

And she knows: she loves Asra now, but it is not enough for either of them.

She feels, sometimes, like a moon orbiting his shrouded world, hurtling after him through the infinite black of space as he, in turn, chases something bigger, something brighter, and she is helpless but to be a pale reflection of the thing he wants most.

Asra tells her often, with pride shining in his eyes, how far she's come, how much she's learned.

It's funny—in the two years she's studied under him, she's never learned how to be enough.

 

\---

 

_(Not far.)_

She stands by their map wall, the yellowing spread of paper surrounded by old postcards and silly doodles and a couple of photographs they'd had taken at the last Midsummer festival.

She pins her finger on the little dot labeled _Vesuvia,_ then follows with her eyes the black road-lines spreading like spiderweb cracks across the continents of ink and parchment. She wonders which one he's taken.

"Where are you?" she whispers, but of course the silence is her only reply.

(Even the renewed distance he's enforced while they sleep feels like a whole world away.)

 

\---

 

"You were closed for a while, Miss Rei," Castor says, tiptoeing to peer over the glass counter, watching her secure the bundle of herbs with paper and twine. He and Fedya are orphans that frequent their street, and are occasionally called upon to make deliveries she can't see to herself.

"Master Asra was just sick for a bit, that's all," she tells him. "I had to take care of him."

"Where is he, then?" Fedya asks, looking up from perusing the crystals. "Is he dead?"

Children are so _morbid,_ sometimes.

"No, he's not dead," she says firmly, knotting the twine with perhaps more force than necessary. (At least, she _hopes_ not.) "He's on a journey."

Fedya makes a face. "He's _always_ on a journey."

_(Don't I know it.)_

"He has important things he needs to do," she says, vaguely. She doesn't know what those are, either. "And so do you two." She hands them the parcel and the accompanying note with the instructions for use, as well as the fifty coppers for each of them. "Take this to Old Man Eddie down by the Eastern Docks for me, would you?"

"Yes, Miss Rei," they chorus.

Castor looks thoughtful as he waits for Fedya to tuck the package into his backpack. "Isn't it lonely, being all by yourself all the time?" he asks.

It catches her off-guard, the straightforward honesty. She's gotten too used to evasive non-answers, she thinks.

"Well, a little bit," she admits. "It can't really be helped though, can it?"

Fedya makes a face again as he adjust the straps of his bag on his shoulders. "Mom always used to say people who leave their wives alone day in and day out are good-for-nothin' louts who oughta piss off outta the city."

"Well," she says dryly, steering them toward the door, "it's a good thing I'm not Master Asra's wife, then."

"Well, why aren't you?" Castor asks. _Children,_ she thinks, _are too blunt by half._ She wonders if this is what Asra feels, whenever she asks questions he won't (can't) answer.

"Because."

"Because?"

_(Because you need two willing hearts to make a marriage work, and Asra's is still elsewhere over the ever-shifting horizon.)_

"Run along now, you two," she sighs instead. "Old Man Eddie needs his medicine."

They wave back to her as they run down the street. She watches them disappear from view, their two little silhouettes vanishing into the milling crowd, and pays no heed to the dull throbbing ache beneath the cool bump of the aquamarine on her sternum.

 

\---

 

The desert feels inexplicably lonely, tonight.

Asra stands on the edge of a stone cliff, gazing into the yawning chasm below. The toe-tips of his boots extend just past the ledge. She comes to stand beside him, peering over the lip of the sheer rock face, and shudders; it's a long drop, and a hard landing.

The stars, she realizes, are worryingly quiet.

A nameless fear pools in her gut, and she's about to ask Asra to step away from the ledge when suddenly—

_"Do you believe in forgiveness?"_

She whirls abruptly to find a pig-headed figure standing behind them, a pair of golden scales balanced on the tip of an outstretched finger.

"Do you believe in forgiveness?" they repeat, when she doesn't reply.

"Wha—"

Suddenly they are no longer in the desert, but in a somber, tenebrous hall, and Asra is on his knees before a podium that stretches high as coconut trees, almost as if straining to reach the vaulting gray ceiling. His head is bowed, eyes downcast, and his hands are bound.

"Do you believe he should be pardoned?"

The pig slowly makes their way to the podium, climbing what seems like infinite steps to reach the top. They stare down at her and Asra from the great height of the judge's box, the golden scales teetering wildly back and forth on their finger.

"Or punished?"

"For _what?"_ she calls out.

And then, as if summoned by her voice, spectators' stands spring up all around them, the wood of the bleachers dyed the deep brown color of dried blood. A great many dragons and rats and snakes fill the terraced rows, jeering and heckling, their glowing red eyes piercing through the sepulchral gloom.

One word stands out in the raucous cacophony of the crowd: _Guilty._

"Stop it!" she cries, moving to shield Asra from their view. He still hasn't moved an inch. "He hasn't done anything wrong!"

A loud, cawing laugh cuts through the cries of the mob.

"Hasn't he?" a raven calls out from the stands, crimson ropes criss-crossing their chest.

The shouting of the mob swells like a cresting wave, before a low, raspy whisper sounds through the hall, rising in pitch and volume until it drowns out everything else.

_"Murderer."_

Her head swivels to meet red ember eyes glowing within the confines of a cloaked horse's skull. _"Murderer,"_ it says again, louder this time, and it echoes in the damning silence.

A purple snake on the other side of the stands hisses aggressively, their arms wrapped tight around the weeping form of another golden serpent. _"Traitor."_

 _"Thief."_ A white goat grins down at them, their uncannily sharp canines glinting in the dim light.

"All the things I taught you, and you use them for _this,"_ a purple-eyed fox says, shaking their head, disappointment low in the purr of their voice. "Who do you think you are, playing god?"

An elephant trumpets, loud and accusing. _"How many times will you make the same mistake before you are satisfied?"_

"Stop it!" she shouts back at all of them, struggling to be heard over the renewed din of the crowd. _"Stop it!"_

The pig judge from before looks down at her with a bored sort of curiosity. "Will you speak in his defense?"

"He hasn't done anything wrong!"

A bleating sort of cackle comes from their right, a stag with cracked and broken antlers laughing at her from the nearest tier. They grin menacingly at her. "How would _you_ know?"

A dog's barking sounds somewhere, as if from far off.

The pig judge takes out a feather from one of their voluminous sleeves, and a glowing red heart from the other. They place these on the scales and watch as the side with heart sinks immediately with a metallic clank. They lean back, fingers steepled, and stare down at Asra's bowed head with cold, unfeeling eyes.

"The accused has been found undeniably guilty."

_"No—!"_

The barking grows louder, almost just behind her.

"What say you?"

Paws scrabbling at her clothes, teeth tugging at her shirt, pulling her down the hall and away from the judge's podium, and from Asra.

_"What say you?"_

"Asra!"

"I—" His voice sounds hoarse from disuse; already defeated. His bound hands are still and unmoving in his lap. "I accept my punishment."

 _"No!"_ She tries to swat away the little white dog pulling at her clothes, but they only dig their teeth deeper into the fabric, growling as they try to drag her away. _"Asra!"_

"For your sins," the pig continues, unheeding of her protests, "there must be equal recompense. Your heart is now forfeit."

The creatures in the audience descend on her in a furious, clamoring rush, beating wings and claws and fangs tearing her away from the little dog to drag her back before the judge's podium. Asra's head snaps up, the first real reaction she's seen from him since the trial began, his eyes widening in horror as the skeletal horse descends from the stands to loom over her, raising their scythe, the glint of its wicked curve poised high over her chest.

"No," Asra whispers under his breath. _"No!"_

He tries to crawl over to her on his knees, clawing his way forward with his still-bound hands. Another wave of the red-eyed creatures tackle him, pinning him down, forcing him to watch immobile as the grinning horse swings the gleaming scythe down.

 _"No!"_ Asra roars, desperate as she's ever heard him. _"Don't touch her!"_

She closes her eyes as a scream erupts in the room.

_"Rei!"_

It's only when the cold steel of the blade bites into her chest that she realizes the scream is hers.

 

\---

 

She's still screaming when something warm tackles her into the powdery sand.

_"Rei!"_

She opens her eyes and Asra is leaning over her, straddling her hips, his familiar, calloused hands pinning down her wrists. She stops struggling. Above them, the watercolor sky changes hues at a languid pace, ink-spill blues and greens seeping throughout the magenta ether.

Asra's eyes rove over her face, searching, and whatever he finds makes a heart-rending expression bloom across his features. _"Oh,"_ he breathes, tears spilling down his cheeks, dripping like rain onto her skin and to the sand below. "Oh, Rei, I am so sorry. You shouldn't have seen that."

There are a thousand questions battling for attention in her mind, and a thousand more ways to word them all.

What comes out instead is: "They were lying. You haven't done anything wrong."

Asra's soft, defeated sigh ruffles her fringe, and he shifts his weight onto his knees to bring up his hands, cupping her face. It's a comfort like nothing else, to feel the rough pads of his thumbs wipe the tear tracks from her cheeks.

 _"My heart,"_ he murmurs, almost to himself, _"my precious heart._ Forgive me."

He must see the protest gathering on her tongue, because he adds, still in that sad, resigned voice, "I know you hate not remembering. I'm sorry. But I need you to forget."

"Wait—"

He leans down to press his lips to her forehead, and everything goes fuzzy. She thinks, in the brief moment before she wakes, that she might have heard him say _I love you._

(But even that, perhaps, is merely her own imagination—just a wish made manifest in a swiftly unraveling dream.)

 

\---

 

She wakes with only a heavy-limbed exhaustion and impressions of dread clinging like drying sweat on her skin. She is alone in the shop, as expected. Asra has left on a journey, to return whenever his definition of _soon_ might dictate.

She lifts her head, rubbing her salt-sticky cheeks on her sleeve, and looks toward the dresser, where the silhouette of a pair of scissors are just barely visible in the dark.

 _It's a punishment,_ she thinks—vague, half-formed convictions swirling in her groggy mind. _But for what crime?_

Nothing answers her, of course. And when the pale blue dawn shifts to bright yellow day, even that little thought fades away with the dissipating early morning mist.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> An alternate version of this chapter is just Rei singing the entirety of "Make You Feel My Love" when she thinks Asra can't hear, so go give that a listen if you want a Mood™.


	14. Where We Call It Anything But Love

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title is from ["Distance" by Christina Perri](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ROqTa1mn_qc).
> 
> Hey so I'm back on my non-chronological BS because we're gonna start the year right with fluff!!! That means y'all are gonna have to hang onto that previous chapter's cliffhanger ending for a bit longer, but worry not, the plot (and more importantly the angst) will return in the next update. :3
> 
> Set between chapters 10 & 11, so a year and a half before the game starts. Asra and Rei tiptoe around saying _I love you_.

"Will it snow this year, do you think?" Rei calls out absently, only half-expecting a reply as she contemplates the winter sky.

She is sitting on their bed, head resting on her arms resting on the window sill, watching the gray clouds roll lazily by. Asra comes to sit next to her, exhaling into the cavern of his hands; the tap water is cold, these days, and he had offered to wash the lunch dishes all the same.

(This is how he speaks-but-not-speaks; this, she knows now, is how he cares—his kindness poured into the little things, the everyday ordinaries, interspersed between his comings and goings.)

And it is an easy thing, a non-thing, to take his hands in hers, massaging her thumbs over the wrinkled pads of his fingers and the scarred bumps of his knuckles.

(And _this_ is how _she_ cares, by rubbing warmth back into his iced-over skin—every squeeze an imagined kiss, every touch a secret _I love you_ pressed into the familiar planes of his hands.)

"Hm, yes, I think so," he replies. He looks out the window and she wonders why the way his eyelashes flutter reminds her of snowflakes.

(She's never seen snow. Not that she remembers.)

"Why?" he asks, eyes sliding sidelong to glance at her, a tiny smile tugging up the corner of his mouth. "Do you want it to?"

Their hands are resting in her lap, now, her idly-wandering fingers turning languid and slow. His skin is warm again. He doesn't move.

(They are getting better at this—the touching, and the not pulling away.)

She scrunches her nose, looking back up at the monochrome sky. "It'll be cold," she says.

He laughs, and bumps her shoulder with his own. His hands squeeze hers, warm, warm, _warm._ "I can put more heating charms up, if you want," he offers, his mouth curling into his usual gentle smile.

(The smitten-silly part of her thinks that simply the warmth with which he says that is enough to get her through the winter.)

 

\---

 

She returns later that afternoon from a house call, chased back into the shop by a brisk winter wind, only to hear voices coming from the backroom. Several voices, in fact—Asra's _(she would know that anywhere,_ she thinks, _even in her sleep)_ and two others, higher pitched and familiar.

She sweeps aside the heavy curtains to reveal Castor and Fedya attempting to scale Asra as he sits at the reading table, struggling to hold his tarot deck above his head and out of their reach.

"This isn't any kind of reading I've seen you do before," she laughs, leaning against the doorpost. All three of them freeze, before they turn to look at her, their expressions in various shades of sheepish. The two boys clamber off of Asra's lap and back onto the floor.

"Hello, Miss Rei," Castor and Fedya chorus.

"Hello. And what were we doing just now?"

"Asra said his cards tell the future," Fedya says, almost accusatory, like he's waiting for her to call Asra out on a bluff. "An' we wanna see."

"I _said_ that if you have questions about the future then the cards _might_ have answers." Asra pouts, petulant, so much like a child that it makes her laugh again. He catches her eye and throws her an abashed smile over the boys' heads, which she returns in kind.

"Same difference," Fedya grumbles.

"Is that what brought you here today?" Rei asks, amusement still quirking her mouth. "Wanting to see the future?"

It's Asra who speaks up. "I, ah, let them in," he says, hands occupied with shuffling his deck, a nervous habit she's come to recognize. "It's going to snow later, they said. I told them they can stay in the backroom for the night."

"Oh?" She crouches down, balanced on the balls of her feet, so she's face to face with the boys. "How do you know it'll snow later?" she asks, not unkindly.

"Somethin' in the wind," Castor says. "'S hard to explain."

"It has teeth," Fedya pipes up.

 _"Teeth,"_ she deadpans.

"It _bites."_

"Like, when you take your hands outta your pockets an' it tries to snatch your fingers away," Castor clarifies, in a way that doesn't really clarify much at all.

"I see," she says, even though she most definitely does not.

Either she's terrible at hiding her confusion, or Asra just knows her too well (and she's not sure which one she'd prefer, to be honest), because he laughs, a silver _pfhahaha_  that bounces around the chipped plaster walls.

"The air is different just before it snows," he explains. "Especially around the docks. You learn to read the wind."

She hums. She still doesn't quite get it. But she looks down at Castor and Fedya, cheeks red from the same cold that had dogged her the whole way home, and then up at Asra, fidgeting at the reading table like he's waiting for a reprimand. Three pairs of pleading eyes stare back at her, and it would be impossible to say no even if she wanted to.

"Well, _of_ _course_ they can stay." She ruffles the boys' hair and they giggle under her touch, the sound vibrating up her arm to settle inside her ribcage. "For however long the snow lasts."

"Thank you, Miss Rei!"

Castor and Fedya's exuberant thanks is expected enough, though no less adorable for it.

The quiet gratitude in Asra's eyes, however, is a little more strange, and she would ask him about it if she knew he would answer.

(He won't, so she doesn't.)

 

\---

 

The kitchen is cramped enough with just her and Asra; with two more people, it's almost a safety hazard.

"Lively, isn't it?" Asra whispers, pausing behind her with a stack of bowls in his hands. When she looks over her shoulder at him, his smile is wide and bright and also _right there,_ a mere handsbreadth from her face.

Over by the sink, Castor and Fedya are arguing lightly over who's supposed to shred the chicken and who's supposed to chop the carrots. From within the stove, their salamander chirps, both inquisitive about the noise and to warn her that the stock is already boiling. She turns back to the pot and adds the pasta, hiding a smile (and a nervous blush) of her own.

"That's _one_ word for it," she snorts, and for some reason that makes Asra cough and duck his head, muttering a soft _sorry._

She tilts her head at him, but he's looking at the boys and chewing at his lip, like he's waiting for a scolding, again.

 _"Hey,"_ she says, leaning back against him the tiniest bit, just enough that her back thumps against his arm. "I didn't say it was a bad thing."

His eyes snap back to hers, and _oh,_ the smile that flickers across his face—small and soft and uncharacteristically _shy_ —almost makes her fumble the salt.

Their rickety old table is a little crowded with four instead of the usual two, and they have to drag over the armchair so everyone has a seat, but they manage, and she thinks it's all the merrier for it, to hear twice as many clinking spoons and scraping chairs and cheerful voices. It's true she cherishes every quiet meal with Asra (especially in contrast to every silent meal she takes alone), but there is something lovely, too, about little feet swinging under the table, and the way Asra's smile looks a little warmer, a little less weary in the flickering orange lamplight.

 

\---

 

It does indeed begin to snow later that evening.

"Huh," she says, looking out at the delicate flakes swirling outside the kitchen window. "They were right."

She hears a quiet chuckle as Asra comes up behind her, just returning from helping the boys get settled in the backroom. He watches the snow fall with an inscrutable half-smile.

"They live on the streets," he says quietly. "They have to know these things." He peers up at the clouds. "It's light, though. It won't stick."

She purses her lips; she asks before she reminds herself not to bother. "And how do _you_ know these things?"

Asra only grins, index finger coming to rest against his lip. "Magician's secret."

She elbows him, but he deftly sidesteps away, laughing softly.

"Come on," he says, walking backwards into the main living space with a smug, feline smile. "It'll be warmer under the covers."

She is getting better at keeping her heart under control while she and Asra prepare for bed together. She had not minded it at all, before; the living space is small, and privacy is a luxury they can't exactly afford, not in this part of the city, and _anyway,_ it's just Asra, who had already seen more of her than is strictly proper, those first few months when she couldn't even make it down the stairs to the bathroom on her own.

But: since coming to terms with her wayward heart she has become a lot more self-conscious, even of the smallest things—the way he brushes against her in the kitchen; the way they wake up curled into each other's space; the way he's _right there,_ a scant few feet away as she changes for bed.

 _Which is ridiculous,_ she reminds herself, pulling her shirt roughly over her head, shivering a little when the cold hits her skin. She quickly pulls on a sleeping shirt and discards her skirt, folding it and draping it carefully over the back of a chair. _He's not even looking, and she is nothing to even be looked at, and, and—_

(—and she is _not_ disappointed, not at all, when she turns and finds Asra just as expected, sitting carefully on his side of the bed with his back to her.)

"Done?" he calls out, probably because he's heard her go still.

(Well. Maybe, _maybe,_ she's just the _tiniest_ bit disappointed.)

"Yeah," she says, and gratefully slips beneath the warmth of the covers. Asra's smile is, as usual, neutrally polite as he turns and crawls under the blankets with her.

"Night," he says, cheery, and extinguishes the lamps with a wave of his hand.

She tries to keep still even after the room settles into silence. She cannot sleep for all her shivering. The one winter that she remembers had been so mild—pleasant, even; a welcome change from the typical Vesuvian heat. But now she realizes Fedya had been right—the cold seeps in through the glass of the window, and it nips at her toes and fingers even beneath the covers.

She carefully rolls over only to find that Asra is facing her, still awake, and quite close to the center of the bed, besides. His eyes narrow with an unseen smile, his mouth hidden beneath the blanket drawn all the way up to his nose.

"Cold, isn't it?" he whispers, voice rasping in its softness, in a way that makes a different kind of shiver threaten to crawl up her spine.

His hand finds hers under the blanket and squeezes. Warm, warm, _warm._ It hooks into the words stuck in her lungs and drags them out to crystallize in the frigid air.

"Can I—" she begins, falters, and finds only encouragement in his ever-patient eyes, "can I come closer?"

Asra doesn't say anything, only smiles and raises his arm to make space for her as she shuffles into the warmth pooling within the crescent of his body. When she is close enough, he drapes his arm over her waist, bringing the heavy blanket down with it, cocooning them both in its soft weight.

"Better?" he asks, breath ruffling the hair at the top of her head.

When she nods, the tip of her nose skims a line down his sternum, and she feels him flinch a little from the cold lingering on her skin. His arm tightens around her briefly, then relaxes.

"Good night, Rei," he murmurs, lips pressed into her hair in a lingering not-really-kiss.

 _It's cold,_ she dissuades her hoping heart. (Accepting her feelings is one thing; allowing herself to spin delusional fantasies would make her a different kind of fool altogether.) _It's cold and she's radiating body heat, so of course—_

"Good night," she says, too short and clipped without a name to follow it. _Master_ feels too foreign, too unwelcome, in the space between her mouth and his chest.

The tell-tale tingle of magic runs down her spine, following the touch of Asra's hand. Little by little, sleep creeps up on her, and it is only in the moment before she goes under that she realizes she is no longer shivering.

 

\---

 

(She is dreaming, again.)

She wants to call out to him, but she doesn't. She knows, somehow, that it is not her place.

Instead, she watches him, standing there on the beach, motionless and silent. Watches him watch two small figures huddled beneath a single blanket, shivering on the sand.

He walks, and she follows. She's not certain if he's even aware of her presence as they make their way through twisting, maze-like streets, further and further into the unkempt parts of Vesuvia. Visions and apparitions fill the dark alleyways—people she doesn't know, things she doesn't understand.

Here, in the narrow gap between boarded-up houses, two little silhouettes crouch over a garbage pile, pulling out scraps of bread and bits of fruit. There, in the shadow of a dilapidated building, a group of ragged bullies surround two smaller figures.

 _"Leave 'im alone!"_ a small voice cries. A flash of light, panicked screams, scattering footsteps, and then the vision fades away.

Still, Asra walks, silent.

She follows him as the houses get bigger, the streets cleaner, until he stops several paces from an open door spilling lamplight out onto the cobbled streets. There, standing just within the arch of the doorway, is a little child too wrapped up in blankets to make out a face.

"They're coming," the child says, muffled by the blanket. "They'll come back. They're just a little late, that's all."

The door closes. A light snow begins to fall.

Asra's soft sigh is the last thing she hears before the dream dissipates, disappearing fragment by fragment, like snowflakes turning into mist.

 

\---

 

She wakes up—it is sometime before dawn, she thinks—when Asra crawls back into bed. His toes are cold when she presses her feet to his.

"Where did you go?" she murmurs, still half-asleep.

"Downstairs," he says, with the slightest chattering of his teeth. "Thought the boys could use another blanket, and I recharged the heating charms to be safe."

She hums, already slipping back into slumber, but not before she wraps herself around him, letting his chilled skin leech some heat from hers.

He shifts. "'M cold, you know," he says, a half-hearted protest. He doesn't push her away.

"I know," she says through a yawn. "So let me keep you warm."

His arms come to rest around her as the world goes hazy. She's lulled back to sleep by the certain, steady beat of his heart, and forgets everything else.

(Even the dream.)

 

\---

 

"Morning, boys," she says, drawing aside the curtain partitioning the backroom.

Castor and Fedya are already sitting up on the pallet, huddled beneath three layers of blankets.

"Morning, Miss Rei," they reply in a mumbling chorus.

They shuffle a bit, not meeting her eyes, before Castor looks up and says, somber, "We'll go soon. Thank you for letting us stay the night."

She smiles and kneels down to wipe a bit of sleep from the corner of Fedya's eye. "Not before breakfast," she says firmly, in a tone that brooks no argument.

 _"Really?"_ Fedya gasps, throwing aside the blankets in his excitement. His eyes sparkle adorably in his rosy face.

"Think you can lend a hand upstairs?" she asks. "Master Asra is already starting on breakfast."

"On it!" He practically leaps out of bed and sprints out the backroom, his footsteps echoing back to them in a sprightly clip as he hurries up the stairs.

She can't help but laugh under her breath at his enthusiasm. When she turns back to Castor, she finds him silently folding the blankets, setting them neatly atop the pillows on the pallet.

"Castor?"

There is something hollow and haunted and _tired_ in his eyes. For a moment he looks too, too old. She thinks she's seen that exact same look on Asra's face, though she couldn't say when.

"Thank you," Castor says quietly, jolting her out of her thoughts. She doesn't quite know how to reply. _You're welcome_ doesn't seem adequate, somehow.

But—she thinks of Asra, and of ordinary, everyday kindnesses, and she thinks perhaps that's something Castor would understand.

"Come on," she says, smiling, and offers him a hand. "It's warmer upstairs."

They crest the landing to the sounds of conversation coming from the kitchen. It's not something she's accustomed to; it should feel out of place, and yet—

"Whassat?" Fedya's voice echoes around the corner.

"Pudding," Asra replies, patient amusement evident in his tone. He's smiling, she can tell, and it makes her smile, too.

(—and yet. _And yet.)_

"Whassit made of?"

"Rice."

"Why's it brown?"

"Chocolate."

Asra's gotten out the good chocolate tablets, and the last of the milk. He's pulling out all the stops, it seems.

"Fedya," she calls, as she takes down the bowls from the shelf, handing them off to Castor so he can set the table, "do you want to feed the salamander?"

"You have a _salamander?"_

The rowdiness of breakfast preparation soon gives way to a more subdued meal. She meets Asra's gaze across the table, concern chiseling a line between his brows as Castor and Fedya carefully take smaller and smaller spoonfuls of the remaining pudding at the bottom of their bowls. Her mouth quirks, and he smiles. He knows what she means.

(He is not the only one who knows how to speak-but-not-speak, and she is not the only one who can read silence.)

"You know," Asra says, leaning back in his chair, overly casual, "I've been meaning to take stock of the inventory in the backroom. I could use some help."

She hides her smile by taking her and Asra's empty bowls to the sink, letting the boys scrape the last of their breakfast as they attempt to draw out the meal.

"You need to dust out the stove, too," she calls back over the sound of running water.

"Right." He sounds only a little bit embarrassed.

"And you said you'd repaint the shop sign _weeks_ ago."

Asra coughs. "That too."

She puts away the clean dishes and detours to the table to ruffle the boys' hair. "Don't let Master Asra just leave your bowls in the sink when you're done," she warns them, before she heads downstairs to open up shop, the sound of Asra's indignant protests trailing along behind her.

 

\---

 

She is hard at work at her potions worktable when someone slips from the backroom—Castor, if the voices that continue in the other room are any indication. At first he merely crosses over to disappear into the bathroom, so she pays it no mind.

But when he reemerges and makes no move to go back to Asra and Fedya, remaining quietly behind her as she works, she turns to him with a smile.

"Is something the matter, Castor?"

He tugs at her skirt, urging her lower. "I have a question," he says, eyes solemn and serious.

She obliges him, leaning down. "What is it?"

"Do you love Asra?" Castor whispers under his breath.

She almost chokes on empty air. _Yes_ sounds with every beat of her heart, burning like wildfire in her veins. For a moment, the winter can't touch her.

(But the chill comes back soon enough, accompanied by the familiar hollow feeling of having to keep a secret.)

"I'm his apprentice," she says, haltingly.

"'S not what I asked."

She has to take a deep breath before she answers. "I care about Master Asra very much," she admits, slowly, quietly. "He's very important to me."

Castor nods. "Why don't you tell him, then?"

 _How can I,_ she thinks, _when he keeps leaving before I can gather enough courage to try? When he'd rather be anywhere but here?_

"Well . . . I _do_ tell him." She thinks of _Do you want more tea?_ and _Let me keep you warm_ and _Come home when you can,_ and how they're all just _I love you_ wearing a different face each time. "Just . . . not in those exact words."

Castor ponders this for a moment, before he seemingly accepts it, and lets his eyes wander over her workspace.

"Whassat you're doing?" he asks.

She smiles, straightening, and motions him closer. "I'm distilling peppermint. This here is what's called a carrier oil—"

 

\---

 

The workday passes quickly and uneventfully, like most inclement-weather days do. As the light begins to fade, the overcast day turning into pitch black night, the boys idle by the stairs, watching her lock up the glass counter.

"We'll be closing up shop soon," she says, watching their shoulders tense in a hunch. She smiles. "It's late. You might as well stay the night again."

Their answering grins are little suns all on their own.

"Go on upstairs," she continues. "Wash your hands. I'll be right behind you."

When the sounds of their footsteps disappear up the stairs, she notices Asra watching her from the backroom doorway, leaning against the post with a barely-there smile.

"What?" she asks.

Asra just smiles wider, lips stretched taut in a close-lipped curve. He shoves away from the doorpost, coming to stand next to her, and, without warning, he pulls her into a crushing hug.

She goes still, as does the whole world. There is only the beat of Asra's heart and the way his arms tighten, just a fraction, as he rests his cheek atop her head.

She takes a breath. Counts the seconds until he pulls away, smoothing a hand over her hair before he moves to go up the stairs, leaving only the ghost of his warmth and the echo of a soft, enigmatic laugh in his wake.

 

\---

 

Later, she is in the backroom, helping the boys turn in for the night. She sits on the edge of the pallet and presses her hand against the heating charm etched on the wall. In her mind, she calls forth the image of fire, concentrating on the comforting warmth of it, until the sigil glows under her palm, taking her magic into itself.

"It should last until morning," she tells Castor softly. Fedya is already out like a light, bundled up to the nose in blankets. "Sleep well."

"Miss Rei?" he says, stilling her before she rises from the pallet.

"What is it?"

"Are you scared?"

She tilts her head, a patient—if perplexed—smile on her face. "Am I scared of what?"

"Of telling Asra you love him."

For a moment, her throat stops working, words failing completely. ". . . And where are all these questions coming from, hm?"

He shrugs, his slim little shoulders rising and falling under the covers.

"Well, 'cause iffen you're not," he says, seemingly working out the sentence as he goes, "then why won't you?"

"Because."

"Because?"

She sighs. "Because there are some things," she says carefully, "that are better left unsaid."

Castor frowns, picking at the edge of the blanket, and says, quietly, "I don't think _I love you_ is one of them."

She pulls up the blankets, fingers alight with a warming spell, threading her magic into the cloth. "It's late," she says, with a soft, melancholy smile. "You should get to sleep. Good night."

"Good night, Miss Rei."

She rises from the pallet, dimming the lamp with a wave of her hand, and makes her way out of the backroom on quiet feet. As she slips past the curtains, she pauses in the shop proper, fighting to rein in her racing heart.

It's not telling Asra that she's afraid of, exactly. It's his answer—or in all likelihood, his lack of it—that she thinks she might not be able to take.

And besides, there is something in the way he keeps leaving that makes her think he doesn't _want_ to hear it. Not now. Not from her, at least.

(And: what if— _what if_ —admitting her feelings for him is what drives him away for good?)

The long stretches of silence and solitude are already enough to drive her half-mad with worry and the ever-present fear that _this_ is the time he won't come back, or _this,_ or _this._ What if her _I love you_ is what makes him give up on her at last? What if it's what finally makes him say _goodbye?_

And, yes, maybe it's selfish to want to keep him. Maybe her silence makes her a liar. But is it truly such a criminal offense, to want someone to stay?

So: she will not tell him, if he does not wish it. That's _fine._

No, _really._

(Even her silence is part of how she shows she cares.)

 

\---

 

When she's calm enough to make her way upstairs, Asra is sitting on their bed, surrounded by clothes she's never seen him use—a too-small shirt and a scarf with a tattered edge and two pairs of gloves, one mismatched and the other missing some of its fingers. He has a needle and thread in one hand, seemingly trying to stitch up a tear on the sleeve of the shirt.

"What are you doing?" she asks, crossing over to their dresser to begin preparing for bed.

He startles when he realizes she's in the room with him. "Ah, well," he mumbles, studiously concentrating on his sewing, "I figured, since I'm not using these . . ."

He's flustered, again—like he's been caught doing something he shouldn't, or at least something he doesn't want her to see. It's strangely adorable.

(Well. A different kind of adorable from usual, anyway.)

"You've got quite the soft spot for them," she observes, shrugging into a sleeping shirt before joining him on the bed. Something wistful lingers in his eyes, in the slight upturn of his mouth, even as he continues sewing the tear shut, squinting in the dim lamplight.

"'S a hard life they have," he shrugs. "They'll need whatever help they can get."

She watches him concentrate, biting back a smile at the sight of his tongue sticking out of his mouth, before she chuckles, low, and takes both needle and shirt from him. She holds the fabric taut between her fingers and then quickly, methodically, begins to slip the needle in, out, in, out, until the rip is closed and all but invisible.

"Sorry," Asra says, with the same flustered sort of smile. "You've always been better at that."

"I don't mind doing it," she assures him. ( _This_ is what she was telling Castor about; _this_ is how she says _I love you_ —with a different set of words every single time, her real meaning hidden like a stolen sugar drop under her tongue.) She reaches for the scarf next. "You can go ahead and sleep. I'll finish this soon enough."

"Mm, no, I'll stay up with you." He settles back against the pillows, seemingly content to watch her work in comfortable silence.

At length, he begins, tentative, "You let them stay."

She glances over at him, an eyebrow raised, before she returns to her sewing. The scarf is a bit trickier, requiring her to fold over the unraveling edges in sections and stitching them in place, slowly working her way along the length of the fabric.

"Why not?"

She sees him shrug out of the corner of her eye.

"'S not as if we have a whole lotta food to spare. And shop business is usually sparser in the winter, besides."

"They're _kids,"_ she says. She thinks that's explanation enough, personally, but adds, "And we still have more than they do."

Asra is quiet for a long while, before he murmurs, "You really haven't changed at all, have you?"

His smile is on the sadder side of nostalgic when she looks at him curiously, but he only shrugs again.

"I can finish that," he says, holding a hand out for the sewing, "iffen you're tired."

She glances sidelong at him. _Iffen you're tired?_

"I'm not," she says, choosing not to comment on it. He doesn't seem to realize what he said, in any case. She tugs the scarf out of his reaching fingers. "But if you insist on staying up . . ."

He raises an expectant brow.

"Talk to me?" she asks. "Work always goes faster with a good story."

He smiles. It's probably a trick of the light _(a trick of the heart)_ but she thinks it looks softer than usual. "What about?"

(Anything. Everything. _You._ )

"Have you ever seen snow?" she asks instead. "I mean, when there's a lot of it. Not like—" she waves the needle in the direction of the window, "—this."

And so, somewhere between fixing the scarf and altering the gloves to be purposely fingerless, Asra ends up with his head in her lap, hands moving animatedly as he tells her about glaciers, about auroras, about the lands far south of Vesuvia, where snow covers the ground for most of the year. She smiles down at him, her fingers mindlessly working the needle in a blanket stitch along the cut-off edges of the glove.

"—and it was _really_ cold. I already brought _three_ sweaters for Faust but it was _still_ too cold; she couldn't come out of my shirt the whole time, and—"

She finishes the last stitch and knots off the thread, snipping it cleanly before putting the gloves and their sewing kit aside. With her work done and her hands left free, she tentatively begins to run her fingers in Asra's hair, brushing his curls away from his eyes as he continues his tale. He doesn't seem to mind, or even notice; he just keeps talking, smiling widely, telling her of faraway places long into the night.

 

\---

 

The boys set out early the next morning before the shop opens, restless energy making them fidget after spending so much time indoors. Rei fixes the scarf around Fedya's neck while Castor tugs on his hand-me-down gloves, and she pulls back to examine them, nodding when she's satisfied. Upstairs, she can hear Asra puttering around their kitchen, packing some leftover bread and fruit for them to take.

Castor tugs at her skirt. "Miss Rei."

She crouches down so she's level with him, meeting his earnest eyes. "What is it?"

"I think," he whispers, "it wouldn't be so bad. Iffen you told him."

She blinks. She knows what he's talking about; she's just not sure he _knows what he's talking about._

"And how do you know it won't be so bad?" she whispers back, voice carefully even.

"Somethin' in the way he looks at you," Castor says. "'S hard to explain."

"Like the lighthouse up by the cliffs," Fedya adds.

"The . . . lighthouse."

"Like you make 'im not lost anymore."

(Huh.)

"'S like when the sailors down at the docks get back after a long time," Castor explains, "an' then they kiss the dirt on the beach."

"I see," she says, even though she absolutely, positively does not.

Asra comes down the stairs just then, and he pauses at the bottom step, eyes sliding from Castor to Fedya to her with a curious, searching look. She shrugs, and straightens up, hoping, _hoping_ he attributes her reddening cheeks to the cold. She watches silently as he gives them the leftovers and waves a jovial goodbye.

"Will they be okay, do you think?" she worries out loud, after Castor and Fedya have disappeared around a busy corner.

He glances up at the heavy clouds. "The weather should be milder, now. It won't be so bad."

The sky looks just the same to her as it has been the last couple of days. She doesn't question him, even so.

"Still," she says instead, "it must be tough, not having anywhere to call home."

He hums. "They're stronger than they look, you know. They'll manage." He pauses. "And they have each other," he adds, quiet. Pensive. "Home doesn't always have to be any single place, or even a place at all."

She makes an acknowledging noise in her throat, preoccupied suddenly with thinking of lighthouses, and ships sailing into port.

"Master," she begins, worrying the fabric of her skirt between her thumb and forefinger, "do you . . . like living here?"

He tilts his head. "Here, as in . . . Vesuvia?"

"I mean— _here."_ She waves her free hand around in a vague circle. "In—the shop."

_(With me.)_

He smiles. "Of course."

Her traitorous heart goes _ba-dump._ She knows, she _knows_ she shouldn't read so much into that. But—it's not just _yes,_ or _sure,_ or _I suppose;_ it's _of course. Of course._

"Oh."

"Why do you ask?"

"Oh, no reason. Just wondering." A pause. She bites her lip. She cannot tell him she loves him, but— "But I'm—well, I'm glad. That you live here. That you _like_ living here, I mean."

(. . . That was a weird thing to say, wasn't it?)

Asra just stares, before he bursts into peals of laughter, the sound much too sunny for the winter weather. He reaches out to ruffle her hair, then taps a finger on her nose, light and teasing.

"Well," he says, grinning, "I'm glad I live here, too." And then he ducks his head, tucking his hands into his pockets, and adds, a little wry, staring out the door at the corner where the boys had disappeared, "It certainly beats living on the streets."

 _Oh._ Oh, right. _Of course_ he'd rather have a roof— _any_ roof—over his head than wander the world forever. Who wouldn't?

(She really needs to learn to stop reading too much into his words. For her own sake.)

"Right."

She turns away, heading toward the counter to hide both her embarrassed flush at his touch and the surely-uncalled-for disappointment she feels gathering on her face.

"Rei," he calls out, making her pause. When she looks over her shoulder at him, his smile is nothing short of tender, backlit by the still-open doorway. "There's nowhere else," he says, so, _so_ soft, "that I'd rather call home."

And she has never felt so warm.


End file.
